SPARTA News September 2012

September 2012

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

Well we've gone from a hot and dry July to a warm and wet August. It seems that we have made up for the lack of rain last month with all the storms and showers this month. My lawn is keeping me very busy since it is making up for lost time. I've had to cut it twice within the last week! At least we haven't had many power issues with all these thunder storms.

Last month we had our annual outing to see the Durham Bulls play ball. It's good to have some non-technical gatherings with the "gang". I wish I could have attended the game, but a prior medical commitment got in the way.

I have one word to say about the migration of our last DB2 subsystem to DB2 V10 (CM8 Mode) and that word is SUCCESS! We were able to complete the migration during our production outage on August 19th. We've had a few small growing pains since then and have taken care of those. One of the big things that we've seen is an improvement in most response times and overall batch run times. We've gotten about 40 minutes back on the nightly batch cycle. This had been the biggest benefit of our DB2 V10 migration so far. Now we can begin to move forward with the conversion from CM8 mode to full function mode for all V10 DB2's. We converted two subsystems so far on our QAAD LPAR and have begun the testing of applications there.

On our z/OS 1.13 migration we've been making some good progress on our TECH LPAR.  So far we've had three items that required some attention:
1. Catalog Solutions software (now from Rocket) - New version required for z/OS 1.13 support.  We have downloaded it from the Rocket website and are testing it out now.  Requires JCL updates for use (Boo....).
2. Brightstor FAVOR (CA) - patches required for z/OS 1.13 support of extended format VSAM clusters.
3. VPS/VMCF (LRS) - RC 12 during assembly of VMCF user exit 6.  Undefined symbol DEBEXLEN in $DAS. Not used by exit 6, so we proceeded to do link edit and have not had problem running this exit in testing.

I'll have some more news for you next month on our migration to z/OS 1.13.

This month we will have our semi-annual review of the happenings at SHARE.  Our presenter will be Ed Webb of SAS Institute.  I look forward to seeing you on the 25th at LabCorp in RTP.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Sept. 25 SHARE Conference reports by SPARTA members
Oct. 30 Omegamon XE by Paul Smith of IBM

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.

2012-2013 SPARTA
Board of Directors

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

Ron Pimblett - Vice President
DTS Software 919-833-8426
4350 Lassiter at North Hills Ave, Suite 235
Raleigh, NC 27609

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.

July 2012 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V484 (dated July 8, 2012) 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 August 21, 2012 Meeting

SPARTA met at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park (DBAP) in Durham, North Carolina for an evening at the ballpark. Many thanks to Tommy Thomas for free admittance to good seats. Great weather, really delightful. And thanks to the Bulls for a big win!

Minutes of the July 31, 2012 Meeting (revised)

•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.
•Fifteen (15) people were present of which twelve (12) were members.
•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions.
•The minutes of the June 2012 meeting were approved as published in the July 2012 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of July 13, 2012, the balance is $1,068.50. 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.

•Brad Carson reminded everyone to leave the LabCorp conference room clean.

•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.

•The August SPARTA meeting will be August 21 at the DBAP in Durham. Contact Tommy Thomas for free tickets.

•Food for the August 2012 meeting will be your purchase at the DBAP.

NEW BUSINESS

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

•Send any e-mail address changes to Brad Carson so he can update the SPARTA Listserv.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 8:30 p.m.

•David Lytle from Brocade talked about FICON fabric and performance.

• Agenda
- A little bit about the Brocade Corporation itself
- The Health of the Mainframe Marketplace
- Why switched-FICON is superior to direct-attached FICON
- How to choose between 8Gbps and 16Gbps FICON Infrastructures
- An overview perspective of Brocade’s Product Portfolio for System z
- An overview of new FICON capabilities that YOU can capitalize upon
- About Brocade’s significant FICON Educational Resources
- About how to become a professionally Certified Architect for FICON
- How to access some of Brocade’s Mainframe and FICON Resources

• Your Local Brocade Resources for North Carolina are:
- Dale Hammond – Enterprise Account Executive – 408-333-5411
- Mike Davidson – SAN Systems Engineer – 704-256-4147

• Brocade: Core Beliefs!
1. It is best to do ONE thing really, really well! (Brocade does networking)
2. If Brocade focuses on customer results -- all else will follow!
3. Being Great is just not good enough!
4. Lives literally depend on the availability of our networks!
5. That Standards-based architectures always win!

• Worldclass Partnerships
• Brocade Has Solutions for All Types of Industries
• Brocade solutions are used in the world’s most mission-critical environments

• General Health Of the Mainframe Market
- IBM zEnterprise or z series stands for zero downtime
- Mainframe hardware alone accounts for less than 4 percent of IBM’s revenue
- But when the software, storage and services contracts linked to mainframe computers are included, the figure rises to 25 percent
- And as much as 45 percent of IBM’s operating profit, comes from their mainframe business
- The mainframe is a LONG WAY from becoming extinct!

• Health Of the Mainframe Market - Linux
- Almost 70% of the top System z customers have Linux running on their System z servers.
- The Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) specialty processors are deployed on more than 30% of currently shipping System z’s
- More than 3,000 IBM and 3rd party applications are certified to run on Linux and on System z's IFL specialty processors
- Today, Linux represents ~20 percent of MIPS that are used on the mainframe install base.
- System z provides a lot more functionality than just z/OS!

• Health Of the Mainframe Market - Future
- A Need for new talent
- Mainframes are in all industries and customers are finding more and more work for them to do
- We do need to attract new talent into the mainframe world
- IBM’s System z Academic Initiative program currently enrolls more than 1,060 schools, spanning 67 countries—more than half of the schools are outside of the U.S.

• Why Switched FICON Just Makes Good Sense
- Brocade FICON switching devices do not cause performance problems within a local data center
- Use of Brocade switched-FICON and Brocade FCIP long distance connectivity solutions can even significantly enhance the performance
- Switched-FICON is the only way to efficiently and effectively support Linux on System z connectivity for SCSI data
- Switched-FICON is the only way to take advantage of the full value of your System z I/O subsystem and z/OS enhancements

• Why A Customer Should Consider Deploying Switched-FICON
- Minimum hardware list price of a System z is $50K and can easily get up into the$500K range
- System z196 provides a max of 320 FICON Express8S CHPIDs while
- System z114 provides a max of 128 FICON Express8S CHPIDs
- So CHPID connectivity ports for storage per mainframe are limited
- Sequential throughput per CHPID/System z is also limited:
- z196: 320p x 620MBps = 198,400MBps -- 39% of full duplex 8G
- z114: 128p x 620MBps = 79,360MBps -- 39% of full duplex 8G
- Direct–attached FICON simply provides very little value for your expensive enterprise computing environment
- Direct-attached FICON lacks both performance and scalability!
- 8Gbps and 16Gbps Brocade switched-FICON can overcome these two basic limitations as well as providing many more benefits!

• System z Reasons For Deploying Switched-FICON
- The total number of CHPIDs is limited on System z196 and z114
- With direct-attached FICON you must consume one CHPID to access one storage port
- The CHPIDs on FICON Express2, FICON Express4, FICON Express8 and FICON Express8S channel cards cannot really perform at their listed line rate – it is usually about ? the performance they are rated to achieve ….BUT…. customers can use switched-FICON, making use of Fan In – Fan Out, to mitigate these limitations!

• There is New z/OS and System z Functionality only with CHPIDs attached to switched ports
- New System z functionality will REQUIRE that customers deploy switched–FICON:
- FICON Express8 CHPID buffer credits: Only 40 BCs per FICON Express8 and FICON
- FICON Dynamic Channel Management: Ability to dynamically add and remove channel resources at Workload Manager discretion can be accomplished.
- zDAC: Simplified configuration of FICON connected disk and tape through z/OS FICON Discovery and Auto Configuration (zDAC) - capability is only available on switched-FICON fabrics.
- NPIV: For Linux on the Mainframe, Node_Port ID Virtualization allows FCP I/O users to interleave their SCSI I/O across a single physical channel path.

• More Reasons For Deploying Switched-FICON
- Switched-FICON allows for FICON performance metrics to be ported up to RMF to produce reports
- Switched-FICON in conjunction with z/OS Systems Automation allows more flexibility for z/OS control of FICON configurations
- Direct-attached FICON provides significantly less reliability and availability than switched-FICON
- Consolidation of Channel Cards, CHPIDs and Storage Ports
- FICON switching provides lots of scalability not possible with direct attached FICON and it can also provide significantly improved resource (CHPID and storage port) utilization
- Can host both SAN and FICON on the same I/O infrastructure

• How Are Directors and Switches Different
- FICON Switches -FICON Directors
- Good Availability up to 99.99% -Superb Availability up to 99.999%
- Based upon motherboard design -Based on discrete, redundant parts
- Some redundant components -Complete Redundancy and hot swap
- 24-80 Fiber Channel ports -Highest port counts – up to 384 ports
- Decent fabric Scalability (100’s of ports) -Superior fabric Scalability (1,000s of ports)
- Motherboard problems will require the switch to be replaced!
-Online Error Recovery (non-disruptive failover)
-Online Repair of the error (hot swap)

• How Are Directors and Switches Different - Physical Differences
- Since switches are motherboard-based, they are engineered to run at the then current line rate and cannot be upgraded
- A switch must be completely replaced to repair a failed physical port(s) or ASIC
- Directors have discrete, redundant components that are engineered to run at current line rate – but can be upgraded – and non-disruptive firmware loads
- Failing SPFs can be hot-swap replaced (along with fans and power supplies…)
- New blades can replace blades that have failing or failed physical ports
- It is likely that IBM will have 16Gbps CHPIDs within a couple of years

• How Are Directors and Switches Different - Availability
- Complete non-disruptive Hot Code Load is supported on Director class switches
- Comprehensive, non-disruptive Hot Code Load is not currently supported for FCIP blades and extension switches:
- On extension switches and blades, the FCIP tunnels will go down for 10-15 seconds and all traffic in the tunnels will be disrupted.
- Brocade FICON switches do try to support non-disruptive firmware upgrades but when upgrading firmware on any fixed port, motherboard-based switch, customers may experience recoverable IFCCs.

• Summary (Directors Versus Switches)
- Directors are strategic devices, that solve most connectivity issues, and provide very long term investment protection and value over time in an ever changing enterprise environment
- Excellent 5-7+ year investment (example - M6140s)
- Non-disruptive failure repair
- Non-disruptive and extensive scalability due to port density
- Non-disruptive change to new and faster technology is often possible

- Switches are tactical devices that solve a specific connectivity issue and provide poor value over time especially since technology is every changing at a rate of about every 18-24 months
- Good 2+ year investment (how long do your switches last?)
- Disruptive failure repair (except fans, power supplies and SFPs)
- Limited scalability due to port density
- Disruptive change to new and faster technology

• Brocade Education (Mainframe and FICON Training and Certification)
- Self-paced, eStudy courses
- Wide variety of free online courses
- Virtual classroom training
- Free instructor-led courses via the Web
- Five training modules on Brocade DCX family

- At Brocade facilities
- Hands-on, instructor-led courses at Brocade training facilities throughout the world
- Brocade DCX family services
- Installation, configuration, maintenance
- On-site or near-site FICON training

- Seminars
- Mainframe and FICON 101 Fundamentals – 1-day Seminar
- Mainframe and FICON 201 Advanced Topics – 1-day Seminar
- Switched-FICON Local and Long Distance Cascading – 1-day Seminar
- FICON Advice and Best Practices – 1 - 2 days
- Joint IBM-Brocade Mainframe I/O and FICON Performance Training Seminar - 2 days
- Brocade Certified Architect for FICON (BCAF) Preparatory Certification Seminar – 2 days

• Three Great FICON Resources For You To Use
Visit Brocade’s Mainframe Blog Page at:
http://community.brocade.com/community/brocadeblogs/mainframe

Visit Brocade’s New Mainframe Communities Page at:
http://community.brocade.com/community/forums/products_and_solutions/mainframe_solutions

You can also find Brocade on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/330901833600458/

(Full presentation is available on SPARTA website)


•The meeting ended about 9 p.m.

Treasurer’s Report for September 2012

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $992.29 as of September 10, 2012.

Financial Report
3/01/2012 through 09/10/2012

Items of Interest


SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2012

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Sep. 25 - Pizza
Oct. 30 - Chicken
Nov. 27 - Subs
Dec. 25 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays


IBM Announces the New zEnterprise EC12

contributed by Ed Webb

In case you had not heard, IBM announced the new zEnterprise EC12 on August 28, 2012. As with all “big” things it announces, IBM not only has the Announcement Letter 112-155 but it has a series of EC12 Redbooks for your reading enjoyment.


Budget Planning Tip: SHARE 2013 in San Francisco and Boston

contributed by Ed Webb

Of course SHARE just completed its 2012 Conference season in August in Anahiem, but with budget talk heating up at work, it’s not too early to include 2013 SHARE in your budget planning for next year. First up, SHARE in San Francisco, February 3-8, 2013 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. Then in August SHARE will treat the east coast to a pre-z/OS 2.1 conference in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center, August 11-16, 2013.

So don’t just mark your calendar, be sure it’s in your training budget.

Watch share.org for details.


Apple Expands iCloud Facility in North Carolina

contributed by Ed Webb

As Apple completes its massive solar farm in North Carolina, the company apparently is ready to expand the farm. Several media outlets report that Apple has purchased about 220 additional acres in Maiden, NC for more solar power (here’s one report).


The Demise of the Default Unix User in z/OS

contributed by Ed Webb

“z/OS v1.13 will be the last release to support BPX.DEFAULT.USER, a feature used by nearly 90 percent of sites that use RACF, according to a recent survey conducted by RSH Consulting. What does this mean for these users? Here, we examine the tasks and considerations related to its replacement.

Many z/OS-based TCP/IP applications use sockets (local IP address plus port number). An example is File Transfer Protocol (FTP). For a z/OS user to access such an application, the user requires a UNIX User Identifier (UID) and the user's logon group requires a UNIX Group Identifier (GID).

In RACF, you can assign a user a UID and a group a GID by adding an OMVS segment to each of their respective records. A segment is an extension of a RACF record that provides attributes required by a specific application, which in this case is z/OS UNIX.

As IBM began rolling out TCP/IP applications in the mid-’90s, it was concerned that clients would balk at having to assign tens of thousands of OMVS segments to their users and groups. To ease the implementation of these applications, IBM introduced a feature to assign a temporary default UID or GID to any user or group lacking a UID. This feature first appeared in OS/390 v2.4 (circa 1997). It was implemented as FACILITY class profile BPX.DEFAULT.USER. The APPLDATA field of this profile identifies a user and group whose respective UID and GID are to be used as the default user and default group. The default IDs were open for use by any and all types of users, including technical support staff, started tasks, customers, production batch IDs, business partner FTP IDs, etc.

Unfortunately, this feature hasn’t been a panacea. It essentially creates a shared ID, which security professionals and auditors generally don’t consider to be a best practice. UNIX files or directories any user creates using the default user UID are accessible to all such users. Users of the default user UID are unable to use some UNIX functions, and in a few instances, z/OS UNIX can’t properly provide users with the default user UID when performing certain tasks. In view of these drawbacks, IBM has decided to discontinue this feature and require that all users and logon groups be assigned individual UIDs and GIDs via OMVS segments.”

The bulk of this Enterprise Journal article provides a methodology for dealing with this change.

“Summary

BPX.DEFAULT.USER is going away and there’s no stopping it. Weaning your system off its use can be a delicate matter, particularly if users have been creating and accessing UNIX files and directories using the default user or default group. This is especially true if some of those users are critical started tasks or process IDs. Don’t wait until the eve of your upgrade to a release of z/OS beyond 1.13 to address this issue. The process of examining and updating permissions in all your UNIX file systems is almost certain to take much more time and effort than you might anticipate. Act now!”


Humor


Software Development Cycles

contributed by Ed Webb

1. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.

2. Product is tested. 20 bugs are found.

3. Programmer fixes 10 of the bugs and explains to the testing department that the other 10 aren’t really bugs.

4. Testing department finds that five of the fixes didn’t work and discovers 15 new bugs.

5. Repeat three times steps 3 and 4.

6. Due to marketing pressure and an extremely premature product announcement based on overly-optimistic programming schedule, the product is released.

7. Users find 137 new bugs.

8. Original programmer, having cashed his royalty check, is nowhere to be found.

9. Newly-assembled programming team fixes almost all of the 137 bugs, but introduce 456 new ones.

10. Original programmer sends underpaid testing department a postcard from Fiji. Entire testing department quits.

11. Company is bought in a hostile takeover by competitor using profits from their latest release, which had 783 bugs.

12. New CEO is brought in by board of directors. He hires a programmer to redo program from scratch.

13. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free…

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

7 p.m.

LabCorp in the RTP

Free Food: Pizza, Drink, Dessert

Program:

SHARE August 2012 Review

Speaker:

Ed Webb of SAS Institute Inc.

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

First Class Postage

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