Maximizing performance throughput is just as important today for organizations using the z/VSE operating system as it was in the past. A well-tuned z/VSE system permits maximum workloads to be processed in the shortest time possible, thereby permitting organizations to reap the full benefit of their mainframe hardware and software investment. One area that is always important to monitor and tune is storage I/O performance…

Latency is a very important topic in the world of storage and storage area networking (SAN). The increasing rate of adoption of solid state drives (SSDs) by System z installations makes the subject of FICON SAN latency and its minimization paramount…

The Aberdeen Group recently conducted an in-depth analysis of factors surrounding data center downtime. Aberdeen used the data from the survey to identify the top performers in reducing downtime. They identified three categories:…

What optics and cabling are best used in data center environments? This topic remains a primary concern for many users. And since there’s a cost associated with optics and cabling deployment, this really is a serious decision that shouldn’t be made lightly. Figure 1 shows that each generation of Fibre Channel adds significantly more ports into data centers which, at this point, require serious attention to the types and structure of optics and cables…

Today, it’s generally accepted that System z environments span multiple, geographically dispersed data centers. These data centers are increasingly interconnected for the purposes of disaster recovery (DR) and continuous availability (CA). There are many reasons for this, including the ever-increasing dependency of businesses, governments and society on It services. There’s also the requirement to meet government regulations related to the availability of these It services. Finally, advances in connectivity technology mean it’s now possible to do what previously was impossible, not feasible or even unthinkable…

Simply described, a super highway is a large, wide highway used for traveling at high speeds over long distances. When all goes well, you can quickly travel from point A to point B. However, even the best engineered highway system can become congested, leading to snarled and slow traffic…

If you follow the conversation around software-defined data centers, you’re eventually going to encounter the term “elastic” in conjunction with computing, networking or storage. No, elastic doesn’t refer to some sort of new media for storing data or to some sort of slingshot method for transporting data faster than the speed of light. Nothing so grand. …

Enterprise Executive recently caught up with Greg Lotko, vice president, IBM Storage Systems Development, as he was traveling through Texas to learn about his new role, the objectives he seeks to accomplish and the advances being made in storage…

One of the most frightening topics for a newcomer to z/OS is disk storage management. With more than 50 years of history, beginning with the introduction of the IBM System/360 in 1964, mainframe disk systems have had a long time to mature and develop, and in the process, have achieved an extraordinary level of both reliability and complexity. Despite this high level of sophistication, the main architecture used in z/OS disk administration—System Managed Storage (SMS)—is really quite simple to understand and use…

Being a parent of several teenagers (and a former teen myself), I’ve seen too many times how bad choices, reinforced by other bad choices, can lead to extraordinarily bad outcomes—even when intentions are pure and noble. The same seems to hold true in the realm of technology…