SPARTA News February 2012

February 2012

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

February is here and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow so we are going to have six more weeks of winter. Of course I'm still waiting for the first week of winter to get here. With the weather we had in January, I've heard some people call it Junuary instead! I guess we'll have to see how the rest of February and March go. I'm not going to cry too much if I don't have to shovel out our driveway or sidewalks this year.

For our January meeting, Mike Fitzpatrick from IBM came and talked to us about IPv6. As more and more devices (phones, DVD, Blu-ray, refrigerators, etc.) get "on the net" we have exhausted the 32 bit wide IPv4 addressing scheme. IPv6 changes this to a 128 bit scheme and opens up a lot more address space on the network. Anyone doing major work in the Asia/Pacific rim or dealing with the explosion of smart phones is working with IPv6 now. I'm happy to say that the 4 OS' that I'm responsible for (z/OS, z/VM, OS/2200 and RHEL for System/z) are IPv6 ready, so I just have to wait for our network people to come knocking.

Last month I told you that we would be migrating our largest DB2 subsystem from V8 to V10 during our scheduled outage window. Well we managed to keep DB2 V10 running for about 23 hours before we had to fall back to V8. We had a number of performance issues with both CICS transactions and batch processing. We've got two open PMR's with IBM as we work these issues out. Surprisingly all the web based applications didn't have any reported issues with their native SQL (most of which is handled by a zIIP), so it seems to be the local work that was affected. We tried rebinding packages but that didn't help much, so after a very painful day, we dropped back to V8 and things are back to normal. We all think this was very strange since we hadn't see any performance issues in any of the other 8 subsystems, but saw improvements instead! So as we work this issue with IBM, I'll keep you up to date in future newsletters.

On the z/VM 6.2 front we've gotten the base install done on a second level machine and are checking things out. I like the additions for Single System Image and Live Guest Relocation. Looks like some of the goodies from VMware are getting into z/VM. Only wish I could get good ol’ CMS and XEDIT in the VMware world!

This month our speaker will be Erich Hoppe from IBM to talk to us about the features of the CICS Explorer (shipped with CICS/TS V4). See you on the 28th at LabCorp.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Feb. 28 CICS Explorer by Erich Hoppe of IBM
Mar. 27 SHARE Conference Reports by SPARTA members
Apr. 24 LRS Product Update by Robbin Lanning

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.

2011-2012 SPARTA
Board of Directors

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

Ron Pimblett - Vice President
MDI DataSystems 919-426-6518

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.

December 2011 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V483 (dated December 25, 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 31, 2012 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.
•Nineteen (19) people were present of which fifteen (15) were members.
•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions.
•The minutes of the November 2011 meeting were approved as published in the January 2012 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of January 11, 2012, the balance is $840.81. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the 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 based on internal politics, budget, the weather):

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

•Brad Carson reminded everyone to leave the LabCorp conference room clean.
•The February SPARTA meeting will be February 28 at LabCorp in RTP.
•Food for the February 2012 meeting will be Subs.

NEW BUSINESS

•SPARTA Annual Dues of $30 should be paid in February.
•Thanks to LabCorp and Tommy Thomas for hosting the meeting.
•If you have any Listserve issues, contact Brad. Also update him with any e-mail address changes.
•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:55 p.m.
•Mike Fitzpatrick of IBM gave a presentation titled IPv6 Overview and Configuration:

•Agenda

- Why is IPv6 important?

- What is IPv6?

- IPv6 penetration

- Coexistence and migration

- Enabling IPv6 on z/OS

- What functions are IPv6-enabled?

- Planning how to get there

The presentation will be posted on the SPARTA website.

• Meeting ended at 9:00 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for February 2012

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $788.32 as of February 14, 2012.

Financial Report
3/01/2011 through 02/14/2012

Items of Interest


SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2012

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Feb. 28 - Subs
Mar. 27 - Chicken
Apr. 24 - Pizza
May 22 - Chicken
June 26 - Subs
July 31 - BarBQ
Aug. 21 - DBAP Buy Your Own
Sep. 25 - Pizza
Oct. 30 - Chicken
Nov. 27 - Subs
Dec. 25 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays


End of the Mainframe Era at NASA

contributed by Ed Webb

The CIO of NASA reported on his blog that the space agency has shutdown its last mainframe:

“This month marks the end of an era in NASA computing. Marshall Space Flight Center powered down NASA’s last mainframe, the IBM Z9 Mainframe.  For my millennial readers, I suppose that I should define what a mainframe is.  Well, that’s easier said than done, but here goes -- It’s a big computer that is known for being reliable, highly available, secure, and powerful.  They are best suited for applications that are more transaction oriented and require a lot of input/output – that is, writing or reading from data storage devices.”

Check out the rest of the story at http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/NASA-CIO-Blog/posts/post_1329017818806.html


More Trouble in z Land

contributed by Ed Webb

Today <February 14, 2012> IBM issued this announcement ENUS212-030:
 
“The enhancements to z/OSMF to offer a new DASD Management task, described in Software Announcement 211-252, dated July 12, 2011, will not be available in first quarter 2012 with a PTF for APAR PM40869. IBM® is assessing plans for delivering this capability at a later date.”

I sense a pattern. Waiting for more shoes to drop.


Revitalize Mainframe Storage Performance with VSAM

contributed by Ed Webb

“In the age of virtualization where storage performance is critical, a mainframe operation can get new life thanks to an old technique. The use of data striping attempts to reduce device contention and increase I/O parallelism by breaking up sequences of adjacent blocks across several different volumes. This allows more I/Os to run simultaneously across multiple devices. In this tip, we’ll discuss the IBM software implementation of virtual storage access method (VSAM) striping for mainframes.”

See the rest of Robert Crawford’s interesting tip at http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/Revitalize-mainframe-storage-performance-with-VSAM?asrc=EM_NLN_16231242&track=NL-576&ad=860537&


Apple’s North Carolina iCloud is Solar Powered

contributed by Ed Webb

“Apple is promoting a forthcoming solar array at its Maiden, North Carolina datacenter as a part of its newly-released 2012 environmental report. The company claims that when it is finished, the facility will be the largest end-user-owned solar array in the US, generating 42 million kWh of power. It also says it has won LEED Platinum certification from the US Green Building Council.”

Check out the details here:
http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/02/20/array.among.largest.in.us.apple.claims/


Ancient Computers Still in Use

contributed by Ed Webb

Scary fact 1: “A recent federal review found that the U.S. Secret Service uses a mainframe computer system from the 1980s. That system apparently works only 60 percent of the time.”

Scary fact 2: The US Minuteman missile fleet is tested by a 1970s DEC VAX system.

Check these uses and others for “ancient” computers (including one here in North Carolina) in this article from MacWorld:

http://www.macworld.com/article/165486/2012/02/if_it_aint_broke_dont_fix_it_ancient_computers_still_in_use.html


Interesting Items


Japanese Tsunami Viewed from a Car

contributed by Chris Blackshire

"Yu Muroga was doing his job making deliveries when the 11 March 2011 earthquake hit in Japan. Unaware, like many people in the area, of how far inland the Tsunami would travel, he continued to drive and do his job. The HD camera mounted on his dashboard captured not only the earthquake, but also the moment he and several other drivers were suddenly engulfed in the Tsunami. He escaped from the vehicle seconds before it was crushed by other debris and sunk underwater. His car and the camera have only recently been recovered by the police. The camera was heavily damaged but a video expert was able to retrieve this footage."

Check out this 4.5 minute video: http://www.flixxy.com/japanese-tsunami-viewed-from-a-car.htm

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

7 p.m.

LabCorp in the RTP

Free Food: Subs, Drink, Dessert

Program:

CICS Explorer Updates

Speakers:

Erich Hoppe of IBM

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

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