Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter
Tuning Letter 2019 No. 3 Published
Good news for all our Tuning Letter subscribers - the 131-page 2019 No. 3 issue of the Tuning Letter is now available on our Publications website. This issue includes: IBM announced the z15 family of mainframe processors on September 12th, 2019. On first glance, the announcement looked like a rehash of all the IT industry buzzwords du jour - Cloud, Crypto, Analytics, DevOps, Open Source, and so on. The z15 has many security-related enhancements, but for the rest of us, it initially seemed...
Upcoming Webinar – Customer Experiences Saving MSUs Through CPC Optimization
Hi All, In case you haven't seen the invitation already, Todd Havekost from IntelliMagic and I will be presenting a Webinar on Thursday, September 19th at 13:00 Eastern Time. I'm sure that you all know Todd - he presents at all the major conferences in Europe and the United States, and has received the SHARE Best Session award for his excellent sessions about maximizing processor capacity through cache optimization. In this Webinar, Todd and I will introduce the concepts of cache...
Tuning Letter 2019 No. 2 Published
Good news for all our Tuning Letter subscribers - the 121-page 2019 No. 2 issue of the Tuning Letter is now available on our Publications website. This issue includes: An article about the CA/Broadcom products that exploit zIIP processors. Nearly every Z installation has zIIPs, but trying to identify the products that should be exploiting those zIIPs can be quite a 'challenge' (we know, we tried to do that and have the gray hairs to show for it!). So we worked with Mike Patriarco in...
SHARE in Pittsburgh
The next SHARE conference will be held in the Pittsburgh Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from Sunday, August 4th to Friday, August 9th. You can get more information about the conference here: https://event.share.org/. Cheryl and I will be presenting a double-session on the latest news about IBM’s container pricing initiatives (DevTest Containers and Tailored Fit Pricing), as well as real world experiences and tips about how to set up and manage pricing containers (NOT to...
z13 and z13s End of Marketing Date Approaching
This is just a short post to remind everyone that the End-of-Marketing date for z13 or z13s upgrades is just a month away. Upgrades that involve real hardware (such as additional channels or zEDC cards or coupling adapters) must be ordered by June 30, 2019. LIC-only upgrades can be ordered up until June 30, 2020 (refer to IBM US announcement letter 918-110 for the details). This is especially important for anyone that has one or more z13s CPCs with InfiniBand Coupling Links. The IBM ZR1...
Tuning Letter 2019 No. 1 Available
Hi All, The latest 113-page issue of Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter is now available on our publications website. If you are not a Tuning Letter subscriber, you can view the Table of Contents here. This issue opens with Cheryl's Trip Report from SHARE in Phoenix. This was the first SHARE in 40 years that Cheryl attended but didn't present at. But don't think for a minute that she put in any less effort. Being Cheryl, she picked out and attended the sessions that she thought would be of the...
SHARE in Phoenix
Hi from sunny Phoenix! Cheryl, Brenda, Mario, and myself arrived here yesterday evening and are looking forward to an exciting week. After my first pass over the list of sessions, I have 117 presentations that I would like to see. And that doesn't include the closed door sessions, one-on-one meetings, and lunches and dinners that we've arranged with some of our customers - I can tell already that I'm going to have to go on another diet when I get home. For a change, we are...
Tuning Letter 2018 No. 4 Now Available
Hi All, The latest 134-page issue of Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter is now available on our publications website. We emailed all subscribers last night to let them know, and have already been receiving nice feedback from readers. The Table of Contents is now available on our public website for anyone to view. Just about anyone that is using Db2 data sharing will be interested in our article about Asynchronous System-Managed Duplexing. This function has been available for over 2 years now,...
Tuning Letter 2018 No. 3 Available
Hi All, The latest issue of Cheryl Watson's Tuning Letter is now available on our publications website. This one took a little longer to deliver than originally planned. However there was some late-breaking news on Container Pricing changes that we wanted to include, and then we bumped up against the Thanksgiving holiday and some other large projects that our publisher was in the middle of. The Table of Contents will be available on our public website tomorrow for anyone to view. This issue...
Something for Everyone in October
It's been a while since our last blog post, so we thought that we would pass along some recent news to brighten your mid-week for you. First, in case, you missed it, IBM announced their mid-life update for the z14 and ZR1 CPCs. IBM US Announcement Letter 118-075, issued on October 2nd, lists a number of new and enhanced functions. First up is a new CFCC Level (23) with a new function that should be especially popular with anyone that has a sysplex that spans many kilometers. Also of...