The almost-deafening noise around “utility computing” is inversely proportional to the availability of any real technology to support such a concept. Advocates are full of sound and fury, to paraphrase the Bard, but they have no fist in their glove…

The Linux operating system (OS), introduced in the early ’90s, first grew slowly in popularity, has gained momentum in recent years, and is now a hot industry topic across platforms and vendors. Linux has emerged from its below-radar niche to become a serious contender on multiple computing architectures, including the S/390…

Picture this: You’ve been happily married for 10 years. You have two delightful, young children, four fairly new vehicles in your garage, and you belong to three country clubs, even though you haven’t played golf in years. Your garage and spare bedroom are stuffed to the ceiling with hobbies you’ve lost interest in, though you are still paying the hefty insurance premium on your Persian rug collection. Life is good, except that you are spending 20 percent more every month than you are earning. Everyone is telling you it’s time you did something about it (notably your bank manager). So, what can you do about it? …

CICS TS 2.3

Version 2.3 (203-296) of CICS Transaction Server (TS) includes those Java virtual machine (JVM) improvements: a workload selection mechanism, shared class cache, continuous JVMs, dedicated storage monitor for JVMs, nesting of Java programs, more diagnostic trace granularity with CETR, status monitoring of JVMs in a pool with INQUIRE JVM, JVM profile management, and optimization of launcher code for methods. A new object request broker (ORB) supports Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) 2.3 and General Inter-ORB Protocol (GIOP) 1.2…

While FICON channels offer significant advantages in terms of channel bandwidth and performance, many users long for the old steam gauge utilization metrics provided for ESCON channels. While there are no simple rules-of-thumb for FICON channel management, this article will explore the available path utilization metrics and suggest new metrics for FICON channels. …

You may have read the title and are now thinking to yourself that the best SQL statement to tune is the one the users are complaining about today. I would not argue with that perspective. However, I would like to present a different approach to SQL tuning. This discussion will not take the place of firefighting problem transactions, but it just might remove those situations from your routine. Proactive performance tuning has been discussed for years. This article examines a methodology that can be applied to any application for purposes of tuning the portions of the application that would provide the greatest return on that tuning investment. It is based on the Pareto principle, or the “80/20 Rule.” When applied to a DB2 application, this rule presumes that 80 percent of the resource usage (CPU, memory, and I/O) is being consumed by 20 percent of the SQL in that application. Therefore, tuning that 20 percent of the SQL statements would provide the greatest ROI…

Is used hardware a viable alternative for a data center in search of IBM mainframe equipment? Joel Owens, president and CEO of QualTech International, says it is. And he gets right to the bottom line…

Reading in the last issue of z/Journal about plans to set up a Mainframe Executive Forum, I’m reminded yet again how essential it is for mainframe operations and technical managers to meet on a regular basis, not just to exchange news and views, but to help retain a voice within the broader IT community. Internet discussions are great for exchanging technical tips, but there’s really no substitute for the physical shaking of hands and meeting of the minds!…

Storage networking devices include processors (host servers), channel and host bus adapters (HBAs), switches (including directors), and storage devices (disk and tape, including virtual tape). Some additional storage networking devices include bridges, gateways, and routers, which were mentioned in the October/November 2003 z/Journal article, “Has Open Storage for zSeries Finally Arrived?”. Figure 1 shows a storage network with two separate fabrics (I/O paths) for redundancy (Path A and Path B) with servers attached to both. Figure 1 also shows servers that are single-attached only to Path B. Servers are attached to switching devices (director or switch) that have storage attached to them. Figure 1 also shows a switching device connected to another switch on the right using interswitch links (ISLs) in what is known as a cascade topology. This is an example of a metropolitan area network (MAN) or wide area network (WAN) for remote storage access and mirroring for data protection and access…

As we’ve seen in previous articles, Linux on the mainframe is largely similar to Linux on a PC. However, the main thrust of this ongoing series has been to show how Linux guests in a z/VM environment can leverage VM’s capabilities to do things otherwise impossible on a stand-alone Intel server. In this article, we’ll examine the use of CMS as an extremely smart BIOS for the z/Linux guest and how to maximize CP services and the CMS file system from within Linux itself. …