SPARTA News February 2011

February 2011

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

February is here and hopefully some warmer weather will be coming our way soon. It's been a roller coaster ride with a bit of everything coming down over the last few weeks. My sinus' are having so much "fun" with all this that it has been a miserable winter for me so far. I hope the rest of you are faring better than I am.

Our January meeting brought us a visit from Brad Hinson of Red Hat to talk to us about their latest offerings for the zSeries platform. We were shown what the latest enhancements are for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) V6. This RHEL can run either native in an LPAR or as a guest under z/VM. This OS is a full 64 bit version of Linux that is based on the Fedora 14 open distribution. IBM supplies the s390-tools kit, and zSeries specific drivers for both RHEL and Novell's SUSE Linux. I've now gotten Fedora 14 running on an old x86 system at home for me to "play with".

We finally got the approval to begin our migration from DB2 V8 to DB2 V10. It seems that everyone wanted to have their say in how this project my affect their work. I hope to have V10 ordered by the time of our meeting this month. We are still waiting to hear from BMC on when their DB2 tools will exploit V10 features, so there might be some more waiting ahead. At least we can start getting V10 loaded on our TECH LPAR and see how involved this migration will be for our DB2 subsystems (we have 10 now). This should keep my DB2 sysprog busy for a little while.

SHARE in Anaheim is coming very soon. I'm happy to say that LabCorp has allowed me to attend this time. Of course I am doing a presentation on our z/OSMF user experience, so that may have helped. I'm looking forward to going and see what is happening in the zSeries world. I'll be giving my trip report at next month's meeting.

This month we will have Monica Bennett and Brian Kithcart from EMC/BusTech come talk to us about virtual tape-on-disk solutions. I look forward to seeing you all at LabCorp on the 22nd.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Feb. 22 Virtual Tape-on-Disk Solutions from EMC/Bus-Tech
Mar. 29 SHARE Reports
Apr. 26 Omegamon or Netview

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.

Early 2011 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V480 (dated January 16, 2011) 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 January 25, 2011 Meeting

•Meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Brad Carson, the Chapter President.
•The meeting was held at LabCorp in RTP, N.C.
•Twenty-two (22) people were present of which sixteen (16) were members.
•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions.
•The minutes of the November 2010 meeting were approved as published in the January 2011 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer gave the Treasurer's Report. As of Jan. 16, 2011, the balance is $1,004.27. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report.

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 based on internal politics, budget, the weather):
- Feb. 22 Ivan Gelb, CICS Performance.
- Mar. 29 SHARE Updates, Presenters TBD
- Apr. 26 Paul Smith, Omegamon update or Netview
- May 31 Pratt Parish, EMC/BusTech
- June 28 David Jones IBM, JES3
- July 26 Ann Totten, z/OS 1.12 zFS
- Aug. 30 Durham Bulls
- Sept. 27 SHARE Updates, Presenters TBD
- Oct. 25 UBS Hainer, DB2 BVC5 Copying DB2
- Nov. 22 Cheryl Watson (Topic TBD)
- Dec. 27: No meeting

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett.
•Brad reminded everyone to keep the conference room clean.
•SPARTA membership dues are $30 and are to be paid at the February meeting.
•The February SPARTA meeting will be February 22 at LabCorp in RTP.
•Food for the February meeting will be Subs.

NEW BUSINESS

•Thanks to Tommy Thomas of LabCorp for hosting the meeting.
•Brad Carson talked about forming a Nominating Committee for the 2011-2012 SPARTA Board of Directors.
•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:45 PM.
•The speaker was Brad Hinson of Red Hat who discussed “What’s New with Red Hat on System z”.

The full presentation can be viewed at http://www.spartanc.org/What's New with Red Hat on System z SPARTA, January 2011.pdf

Some of the session topics presented:

What is Linux?
Linux Facts
Linux on System z Development
Community
Fedora
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
What is fedora?
...A set of packages
Technical Excellence
Who uses fedora?
Fedora Common Deployments
http://fedoraproject.org/join-fedora
Red Hat Enterprise Linux on System z
Red Hat offers a comprehensive platform
What are Linux users running on RHEL?
RHEL 6: Key Features
In Depth: Cloud Enablement with Control Groups
Efficiency, Reliability & Scalability
File systems
In Depth: Next Generation BTRFS File system
LVM, Storage & Multipath
Networking
IPA Client (Identity, Policy, Audit)
Security enhancements
s390-tools version 1.8.2
Advanced Configurations: TTY Terminal
TTY Terminal Server Over IUCV
Advanced Configurations: Shared Kernel
Documentation Links
Systems Management with RHN Satellite
Satellite deployment model
RHN Satellite
RHN Satellite on System z
PXE Deployment on System z
RHEL 6 on System z, Detailed Features
Advanced Virtualization
Suspend/Resume Support
Storage Support
Networking
RAS: Reliability, Availability, Serviceability
Miscellaneous
Kernel Scalability
Customer Examples
Who is Using RHEL on System z in Production?
Reduce Cost, Manage Risk and Improve Service with Linux on System z
More Public References and Case Studies...
A Deeper Dive ñ Bank of New Zealand
Bank of New Zealand: Price/Performance of RHEL on z with Oracle DB


* Meeting ended at 8:40 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for February 2011

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $851.30 as of February 13, 2011.

Financial Report
3/01/2010 through 02/13/2011

Items of Interest


SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2011

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Feb 22 - Subs
Mar 29 - BarBQ
Apr 26 - Pizza
May 31 - Chicken
Jun. 28 - Subs
July 26 - BarBQ
Aug. 30 - Durham Bulls - buy your own
Sept. 27 - Pizza
Oct. 25 - Chicken
Nov. 29 - Subs
Dec 27 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays!


If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Build a Smarter Data Center

contributed by Ed Webb

by Joe Clabby
January 12, 2011

Read this entire article online at http://www.mainframezone.com/it-management/if-you-cant-stand-the-heat-build-a-smarter-data-center


“Recently, we attended IBM’s Integrated Service Management (ISM) for a Smarter Data Center event that was held in Raleigh, NC. At this event, IBM discussed in depth its ISM products and strategies and its thoughts on workload optimization, and showed a large group of research analysts how it architected and operates its newest, most modern “smarter data center.” IBM’s insights and its new, smarter data center implementation showed us that tremendous improvements in data center efficiency can be achieved if we all get a little “smarter.”....”

Did anyone in SPARTA attend this event in Raleigh?

Who Cares About SyslogD on a Mainframe?

contributed by Ed Webb

“Unix System Services (USS) on a mainframe basically allows Unix applications to run and communicate. Running under USS is Syslog Daemon or SyslogD. This is an important system component because it’s part of z/OS’s Intrusion Detection and prevention Services (IDS). SyslogD receives detailed event messages, such as security violations, as well as messages from many other communications services such as FTP and AT-TLS, plus messages from routers, switches, and other network-based devices.

So, in the event of a hacker trying to log-on to your mainframe, how would you know? And when would you know? Surprisingly, many sites appear to ignore the information written to SyslogD completely! While other sites look at what has happened, perhaps a minute ago, perhaps an hour ago, perhaps yesterday!”

Check out the rest of this blogpost at http://mainframeupdate.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-cares-about-syslogd-on-mainframe.html

IBM Previews z/OSMF V1R13 and z/OS V1R13

contributed by Ed Webb

IBM just announced a Preview of z/OSMF R13 and z/OS R13 in time for details to be discussed at SHARE in Anaheim, beginning Feb. 27.

http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS211-007

Here’s some items that caught my eye in the Preview:

For z/OS R13:

•DFSMSdfp is planned to allow you to use a new keyword in a DEVSUPxx member of parmlib to specify that descriptive text, in addition to abend codes and return codes, be provided for many Open, Close, and End of Volume errors. This will make it easier to determine the reason for these errors quickly without having to look up the messages and return codes.
 
•Catalog processing is planned to be enhanced to increase the number of aliases that can be defined for a user catalog. For example, if your master catalog is defined with the default record size, the maximum will be increased from approximately 3,500 single-level aliases per user catalog to approximately 250,000 or more. The actual maximums vary with the lengths of the aliases defined.
 
•Support in z/OS UNIX System Services is planned for user-level file system mounts. This is designed to provide support for limiting overall user mounts, the ability to allow these functions for specific users and groups of users, the ability to restrict which mount points a user may use, and the ability to allow user mounts only at empty mount points. Also, improved warning and failure messages are planned for some mount and unmount operations. The ability to move these mounts from system programmers or administrators directly to users can improve usability and flexibility, and make it easier to use z/OS UNIX.
 
In z/OSMF R13:
 
•A new software deployment function is planned for z/OSMF V1.13, which is planned to run on z/OS V1.13. The software deployment function is designed to provide the functions needed to create and deploy a copy, or clone, of an existing SMP/E-installed software image, including IBM software installed using ServerPac, CBPDO, or fee-based installation offerings, as well as ISV or customer software. The function is intended to help you create and distribute copies of system software, including target libraries, distribution libraries, SMP/E zones, and related data sets you identify. Software deployment is designed as a z/OSMF application, and is intended to make it easier to manage your software images by simplifying and standardizing these deployment processes.


Humor


Good Things!!!

contributed by Ed Webb

Written by Regina Brett, 90 years old, of the Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio
.
"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:"

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?'
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come...
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."

Numbers Trivia

contributed by Chris Blackshire

2011 is the sum of eleven “consecutive” prime numbers, and is itself a prime number....

2011 = 157 + 163 + 167 + 173 + 179 + 181 + 191 + 193 + 197 + 199 + 211

For even more nerdy-ness: the next year that is a prime number and a sum of a prime number of consecutive prime numbers (like 2011) is

2081 = 401 + 409 + 419 + 421 + 431

This year we will experience 4 unusual dates....

1/1/11,  1/11/11,  11/1/11,  11/11/11.

NOW go figure this out....

Take the last 2 digits of the year you were born plus the age you will be THIS year.

It will equal 111.


Playing With Words

contributed by Chris Blackshire

This has got to be one of the cleverest list I've seen in awhile. Someone out there must be amazing at Scrabble.

PRESBYTERIAN:
When you rearrange the letters:
BEST IN PRAYER

ASTRONOMER:
When you rearrange the letters:
MOON STARER

DESPERATION:  
When you rearrange the letters:
A ROPE ENDS IT

THE EYES:  
When you rearrange the letters:
THEY SEE

GEORGE BUSH:
When you rearrange the letters:
HE BUGS GORE

THE MORSE CODE:
When you rearrange the letters:
HERE COME DOTS

DORMITORY:
When you rearrange the letters:
DIRTY ROOM

SLOT MACHINES:
When you rearrange the letters:
CASH LOST IN ME

ANIMOSITY:
When you rearrange the letters:
IS NO AMITY

ELECTION RESULTS:
When you rearrange the letters:
LIES - LET'S RECOUNT

SNOOZE ALARMS:
When you rearrange the letters:
ALAS! NO MORE Z 'S

A DECIMAL POINT:
When you rearrange the letters:
I'M A DOT IN PLACE

THE EARTHQUAKES:
When you rearrange the letters:
THAT QUEER SHAKE

ELEVEN PLUS TWO:
When you rearrange the letters:
TWELVE PLUS ONE

AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE:

MOTHER-IN-LAW:
When you rearrange the letters:
WOMAN HITLER

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, February 22, 2011
7 p.m.

LabCorp in the RTP

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.

Free Food: Subs, Drink, Dessert

Program:

Virtual Tape-on-Disk Mainframe Solutions

Speaker:

Monica Bennett and Brian Kithcart of EMC/Bus-Tech

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

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