SPARTA News August 2010

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

August is here and to escape a week of very hot weather, I went to SHARE 115 in Boston. It was great weather up there with only one afternoon of rain. My biggest problem was that I couldn’t get any Red Sox tickets, with Fenway just a few blocks away.

Last month we had a visit from Luis Gasca of Serena Software to discuss “A Day in the Life of a System Change”. He showed us the common pitfalls that can happen when system related changes aren’t thoroughly checked and tracked. Using Serena’s Changeman product, he showed us how it can provide the needed checks and balances that would make auditors very happy. With the waves of regulatory obligations we all have today (HIPAA, SOX, GLBA, PCI, to name a few), this is going to become a larger issue as audits get more intensive.

z/OS 1.11 has now made it all the way to production here at LabCorp. We did the cutover during our outage on 8/15. So far there have been no major (or minor for that matter) issues. The application support staff is very happy to have the LOGON RECONNECT support of TN3270 working on this LPAR now. Once the dust from this upgrade settles, we are going to work on converting our SMF recording from VSAM to the system logger and getting the z/OSMF processes running. So you will probably here a lot of grumbling coming from our z/OS sysprogs.

Well on the Unisys side, I called it last month. We got a 4% CPU savings by implementing MQ offload on this system and lost it plus some more when the latest release of our lab services code went into production. So now we have those developers looking over some of their code again. Boy I wish that there was a STROBE like product for this platform.

We’re now applying all available toleration maintenance to z/VM 5.4 to prepare for the z/VM 6.1 installation. We are also looking at setting up a few SLES Linux instances for the network security group. So we are beginning to make some headway with people seeing z/VM as a valid platform for server virtualization.

This month we’ll be having our annual outing to see the Durham Bulls play ball. I look forward to seeing you at the DBAP on the 31st.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


August 31 Durham Bulls at the DBAP

Sept. 28 SHARE Reports from SPARTA members

We need ideas and volunteers for future speakers. Presentations don’t have to be fancy, just informative and interesting. Even a 5 or 10 minute talk can start an interesting interaction. Contact Ron Pimblett by phone as noted below.

2010-2011 SPARTA
Board of Directors

Brad Carson - President
LabCorp 336-436-8294
3060 S. Church St.
Burlington, NC 27215

Ron Pimblett - Vice President
Dignus, LLC 919-676-0847
8354 Six Forks Road
Raleigh, NC 27615

Mike Lockey - Secretary
Guilford Co. Information Services 336-641-6235
201 N. Eugene St.
Greensboro, NC 27401

Tommy Thomas - Treasurer
LabCorp 336-436-4178
3060 S. Church St. 919-361-7267
Burlington, NC 27215

Ed Webb - Communications Director
SAS Institute 919-531-4162
SAS Campus Drive
Cary, NC 27513

Meetings

Meetings are scheduled for the last Tuesday evening of each month (except no meeting in December), with optional dinner at 6:15 p.m. and the meeting beginning at 7:00 p.m.

These monthly meetings usually are held at LabCorp’s Center for Molecular Biology and Pathology (CMBP) near the Research Triangle Park (see last page). Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto Alexander Drive. Go about a mile or so. Then turn right into LabCorp complex and turn Left to the CMBP Building. In the lobby, sign in as a visitor to see Tommy Thomas. Tommy will escort you to the conference room.

Call for Articles

If you have any ideas for speakers, presentations, newsletter articles, or are interested in taking part in a presentation, PLEASE contact one of the Board of Directors with your suggestions.

Newsletter e-Mailings

The SPARTA policy is to e-mail a monthly notice to our SPARTA-L Group. The newsletter is posted to the website about five (5) days before each meeting so you can prepare. The SPARTA-L Group is maintained by Brad Carson; if you have corrections or problems receiving your meeting notice, contact Brad at 336-436-8294.

Late 2009 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V478 (dated December 27, 2009) are available from www.cbttape.org.

If you need help obtaining one or more files, contact Brad Carson at LabCorp or Ed Webb at SAS (see Board of Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the July 27, 2010 Meeting

•Meeting was called to order at 7:00 p.m. by Brad Carson, the Chapter President.

•The meeting was held at LabCorp in RTP, N.C.

•Sixteen (16) people were present, of which thirteen (13) were members.

•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job function.

•The approval of the minutes of the June 2010 meeting was tabled until the next meeting as the minutes have not been published as of the meeting time.

•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer gave the Treasurer's Report. As of July 18, 2010, the balance is $1,112.36. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the July 2010 newsletter.


OLD BUSINESS

•Articles are needed for this newsletter. If you would like to write an article for this newsletter, please contact Ed Webb. Keep in mind that you don't really need to write the article, it can be an article that you read that you would like to share with the membership.

•The SPARTA Web page is available. To access the SPARTA Web page, point your Web browser to this site: http://www.spartanc.org. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web page to Mike Lockey. Be sure to check the Web page every once in a while to see any new or changed information.

•Future Speakers and Topics:
(subject to change)

Aug. 31, 2010: Durham Bulls at the DBAP
Sept. 28, 2010: SHARE Attendees, "Share Update" from Boston August 2010
Oct. 26, 2010: Green Data Center at IBM RTP
Nov. 30, 2010: Emmanuel Sauvion, Sysload Software, Performance Management Virtual Environment

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett.

•The August SPARTA meeting will be an outing at the Durham Bulls on August 31. See Tommy Thomas for free tickets. About 25 will be available.

•Food for the August meeting will be your choice at the ballpark.

•Brad reminded everyone to keep the conference room clean.

NEW BUSINESS

•Thanks to Tommy Thomas of LabCorp for hosting the meeting.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:45 p.m.

•The speaker was Luis Gasca from Serena Software. For the last 2 years, Luis has been a Solutions Architect specializing in software change and configuration management at Serena (www.serena.com) and has 20 years experience in the IT industry. Luis spoke about “A Day In The Life Of A System Change.”

Some of the topics presented:

•What Drives Change In Your Application Environment?
- New Business
- Application Modernization
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Regulation Compliance
- Defects
- Issues
- Emergencies

•What Drives Change In Your System Environment?
- System Upgrades
- Software Patches
- Software Rationalization
- Migration
- Consolidation
- Disaster Recovery
- Application Retirement

•Data Center Demands
- Availability
- Recoverability
- Stability
- Accessibility
- Performance
- Security
- Compliance
- SLAs

*** The Balancing Act - Change versus Risk ***

•Do You Know?
- What is changing?
- What is not changing?
- Why is it changing?
- By whom and when?
- Was this the only change?
- How you can recover?
- Were you notified?
- Can you replicate it?

•How Does Change Work On A Good Day
1. Ticket entered in Request Management system (RM)
2. RM System approval & prioritization
3. RM assignment given to a System Programmer
4. System Programmer creates package in SCCM/SMPE
5. System Programmer makes change in SCCM/SMPE
6. Manager approves SCCM package and change installed
7. System Software Manager (SSM) traps the change
8. SSM notifies manager of change
9. Manager validates the SSM change with original request
10. SSM propagates change to other LPARS
11. Change is auditable on RM, SCCM, SMPE and SSM

•How Does Change Work On A Not So Good Day
1. Change happens
2. SSM traps the system change
3. SSM alerts the manager
4. Manager does not validate change
• No RM ticket
• No documentation
• No assignment
• No SCCM package
• No SMPE
3. SSM can still propagate change
4. SSM can also recover from change
5. Change still auditable in SSM

•How Do Your Change Needs Compare To The Serena Tools Capability?
* How Do You Make Changes?
* How Do You Track Changes?
* How Do You Do Change Recovery?
* How Do You Recover Changed Members?
* How Do You Identify Changed Members?
* Change Synchronization - Serena Tool
- Site By Site
- Multiple Sites
- Disaster Recovery
- System Consolidation
- Software Migration
- Change Shopping Basket
- Verify Shopping Basket
- Change Basket Contents
- Ship The Basket
- Submit Distribution (apply change)
- Changes Synchronized
- Change Validation
•Storage Optimization - Serena Tool
- Member Copy
- Redundancy Detection
- Report Parameters
- Member Redundancy Report
- Member Reference Tracking
- Zero Reference Report
•Serena Delivered Solutions (Change Needed Summary)
- Superior Change Management
- System Software Management
- Unified Management
- Problem Diagnosis & Resolution
- Process Optimization & Tuning
- Universal Data Verification

•Serena Delivered Tools (Tools Delivered Resolution)
- ChangeMan ZMF
- ChangeMan SSM
- StarTool FDM
- StarTool DA
- StarTool 100
- Comparex

•Luis can be reached at lgasca@serena.com or 972-308-6167.

•Luis will send the presentation to Ron or Mike for posting on the SPARTA webpage.

•Meeting ended at 8:30 p.m.

Treasurer’s Report for August 2010

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $1072.72 as of August 22, 2010.

Financial Report
3/01/2010 through 8/22/2010

Items of Interest


SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2010

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Aug. 31 - Buy Your Own Food at the DBAP
Sept. 28 - Pizza
Oct. 26 - Chicken
Nov. 30 - Subs
Dec. 28 - No meeting. Happy Holidays!


Monitor Your Mainframe from an iPad

contributed by Ed Webb

“Now, more conveniently than ever, you can check your z/OS network performance from your daughter’s ballet recital.  Or while you’re watching Jay Leno.  Or while you’re even sitting on the toilet.  The sky’s the limit now that a network suite has been ported to the iPad.  Just make sure there’s a good cell phone signal or Wi-Fi connection.

William Data Systems just announced that its ZEN z/OS network monitoring software has been ported to the Apple iPad.  According to the company, the technology was shown at the SHARE conference in Boston last week by walking the iPad around the Hynes Convention Center to demonstrate its mobile monitoring prowess.  In speaking with Simon Cooper, ZEN Business Development Manager, on the ZEN on the iPad technology, I asked him if there would be future mobile support for items such as smartphones.”

Check the whole blog entry by Ryan Arsenault including photo here.

Big Iron: The Mainframe Story

contributed by Ed Webb

Here’s a great article by Stephen A. Menges at mainframezone.com about the history of the IBM mainframe and a new documentary about it titled Big Iron: The Mainframe Story.

“If you were going to create a documentary about the mainframe, where would you start? You could reasonably start with the birth of Alan Turing in 1912, or with the “birth” of ENIAC in Pennsylvania in 1946. How about when Turing’s Pilot ACE ran its first program in London in 1950? 

Other schools of thought might point to Konrad Zuse’s Z1 in 1936, a mechanical calculator considered the first binary computer; others could point to the earliest general-purpose, stored-program electronic digital computer known as the Manchester “Baby,” which performed its first calculation in 1948. IBM’s 701 in 1952 might even get a few votes as well.”

Finish this intro for the video at http://www.mainframezone.com/it-management/big-iron-the-mainframe-story-so-far

Then cruise the ‘net over to ibmsystemsmag.com or ca.com/bigiron to watch the 5-part, 33 minutes video.

USERMOD Revisited

contributed by Ed Webb

This past week I had the opportunity to relearn my USERMOD construction skills. A product that we had separately installed in 2009 became a piece of our standard z/OS ServerPac-delivered image.

When time came to move the configuration module to the new SYSRES, I chose to “improve” on IBM’s distributed sample. The IBM technique was to assemble and link the module and then just feed the load module to SMP/E via the ++PROGRAM MCS statement in a USERMOD.

I prefer to maintain the source as ++SRC in a USERMOD and let SMP/E take care of assembly and link-edit. So I undertook the simple reconstruction of the IBM sample USERMOD into one that I preferred.

Removing the ++PROGRAM and replacing it with the ++SRC followed by the configuration source was straightforward. But getting SMP/E to assemble and link the ++SRC reminded me how long it’s been since I built a USERMOD.

The trick was using ++JCLIN to tell SMP/E where the assembled object should be linked. I took the link JCL and control statements from the IBM sample, put them with the ++JCLIN, and told SMP/E to APPLY the USERMOD. It told me to buzz off because it did not know where the module should go. I had already added the ACAZMOD DD to the JCLIN because I remembered that there was some need for the DLIB in the JCLIN input.

But it took some reading of the SMP/E Messages book to remind me that in addition to the ENTRY and NAME statements from the sample job, I needed to add an INCLUDE from the DLIB for the new module.

Once I added INCLUDE ACAZMOD(CAZCNFG1) to the linkedit statements in the JCLIN, the USERMOD assembled and linked the configuration module into the SCAZAUTH library as planned.

Oh yeah, I did have to add the SCAZSAMP data set to the target zone SYSLIB concatenation so the Assembler could find the macros used by the configuration source.


Humor


It Was So Hot...

contributed by Ron Pimblett

 All the corn on the stalks started popping and flying through the air. The cows thought it was snowing. And they froze to death.

 It's so hot, I saw squirrels fanning their nuts.

 The potatoes cook underground and all you have to do to have lunch is to pull one out and add butter, salt and pepper.

 Farmers are feeding their chickens crushed ice to keep them from laying hard boiled eggs.

 the cows are giving evaporated milk.

 the trees are whistlin' for the dogs.

 Satan decided to take the day off.

 Even the sun was looking for some shade!

 the birds had to pick up the worms with potholders.

 I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walkin'..

 that Dennis Rodman went out without a bra!

 The chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs.

 Two trees fighting over a dog....

 the workers at the chicken place were jumping in the fry vat just to cool off

 I saw a fire hydrant begging a dog to pee on it

 Calista Flockhart of "Ally McBeal" was spotted eating some ice cream. And she almost ate a second spoonful.

 Dennis Rodman, the colorful basketball player, was spotted wearing a bikini. And some people are already wondering if he's cute enough to appear in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue, proving that they've all been out in the sun too long.

 Scientists recently detected beads of sweat on the Statue of Liberty. But they're still searching for signs of life on Al Gore.

 Campbell Soup Co. has changed the directions on its cans to "Just pour and eat."

 Water in public swimming pools is evaporating so fast that children are being encouraged to swim in the deep end and keep ignoring the "no peeing" rule.

 As if the heat isn't bad enough, in many parts of the country, including Pennsylvania, people are suffering through a persistent drought, one that has been especially hard on farmers. Not only are their crops wilting, some of their dairy cows are producing powdered milk. Don't be surprised if milk cartons in the stores soon display this label:  2% milk, 98% air.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, August 31, 2010
7 p.m.

Special Location: Durham Bulls Athletic Park

Check out this link for directions: http://www.dbulls.com/stadium/directions.html

Fee Food: Whatever You Buy

Program:

Triple-A Baseball

Speaker:

Durham Bulls vs. Charlotte Knights

SPARTA News
P.O. Box 13194
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3194

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