SPARTA News November 2012

November 2012

SPARTA President’s Corner

by Brad Carson

It's that time of year again for Turkey and Football, Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you've all enjoyed the holiday weekend. I know I'm trying to stay away from the malls (especially Crabtree Valley), but Martha may have some other ideas about that. A little update from last month, we ended up with 185 trick or treaters for Halloween this year which is a new record for us.

Last month Paul (Smitty) Smith and friends from IBM came out to discuss the latest goings on with OMEGAMON XE. I was happy to see that they finally acknowledged that the 3270 interface is still very valuable for us systems folks. It also looks like some good headway has been made with the configuration utility (at long last). Who knows, I might actually end up liking OMEGAMON again if it keeps moving in this direction.

Our DB2 V10 project is still chugging on. We have three subsystems to convert to new function mode, but have run into obstacles with other projects. I'm hoping to have this project completed by February of 2013. It will only be two years since we've started it anyway. We tried to migrate one of our production subsystems to new function mode and had an issue with the first CATMAINT job. It went down with reason code "00E20005" and we had to open an issue with IBM. So I ended up cancelling the upgrade due to time constraints. I hope to have more for this in future newsletters.

On the z/OS 1.13 front, we've done more testing on our QAAD LPAR and had an interesting situation occur. When we brought the whole LPAR up with automation, everything seemed to go well. However, when we fell back to z/OS 1.11, all 8 MQ queue managers would not start. They would all fail with reason code 00D96001, again another of those frustrating codes that have no description. So we contacted IBM (again) and went down the recovery route. In the end we found that there was some missing co-requisite maintenance from our MQ 7.0 libraries. We had backups and ended up restoring those to get the queue managers running. Motto of this story is remember when you REALLY need to have some backups handy.

This month our speakers will be Brain Kithcart and Monica Bennett from EMC to discuss Mainframe Virtual Tape. I look forward to seeing you on the 27th at SAS in Cary.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Nov. 27 (at SAS) Mainframe Virtual Tape by EMC
Dec. 25 No Meeting. Happy Holidays!

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 October 30, 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.
•Sixteen (16) 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 or job hunting experiences.
•The minutes of the September 25, 2012 meeting was approved as published in the October 2012 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of October 12, 2012, the balance is $859.49. 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):

<editor’s note: changed after the October meeting to EMC Mainframe Virtual Tape>
If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett (919-833-8426).

•The November SPARTA meeting will be November 27 at LabCorp in RTP. <editor’s note: changed after October meeting to SAS in Cary>

•Food for the November 27, 2012 meeting will be subs.

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 7:40 p.m.

PRESENTATION

•Presentation by Mike Goodman and Paul Smith of IBM on What’s New with IBM’s System z Monitoring with OMEGAMON (IBM’s Tivoli Monitoring product OMEGAMON XE version 5.1).

• Agenda (Smitty)
- OMEGAMON family – Visibility, Control, Automation
- Application Performance Monitoring
- Changing how we Develop and Deliver Software
- Simplified Architecture – Reduce Time, Effort, Cost
- Demonstration – enhanced 3270 user interface (Mike Goodman)

• OMEGAMON product family has been helping customers monitor System z for 20 years
- Products Available across z systems are as follows:
- OMEGAMON XE on z/OS v5.1
- OMEGAMON XE for CICS on z/OS v5.1
- OMEGAMON XE for DB2 PE v5.1.1
- OMEGAMON XE Suite v5.1
- OMEGAMON XE for Storage on z/OS v 5.1
- OMEGAMON XE for IMS v 5.1
- OMEGAMON XE for Messaging v 7.1
- OMEGAMON XE for Mainframe Networks v5.1
- Used with IBM Tivoli Monitoring 6.2.3 (prereq) to provide end-to-end performance monitoring
- Strategically supports different IT personas with both:
- Green screen (3270) for rapid response times for system programmers (SMEs)
- Graphics User Interface (Tivoli Enterprise Portal) for Operations/LOB personnel
- And providing z alert/event and threshold notifications to the Tivoli Service Management
ecosystems.

• Business Leaders are looking at IT to drive business agility and flexibility across their Enterprise
- Visibility - React with agility to diverse IT landscape
- Control - Execute with reduced risk and cost
- Automation - Achieve desired business outcomes

• Application Performance Management Workflow
- Sense - Detect that a threshold has been breached or being approached
- Isolate - Pinpoint the problem to a specific part of the IT environment
- Diagnose - Drill down into the details and get to the root cause
- Repair - Fix the faulty component, validate the fix, and roll back into production

• Transaction Tracking Topology
- Deep-dive drill down - Look at both Asynchronous and Synchronous transactions
- Diagrams (GUI type) indicates nodes monitored (Use dynamic workspace links)
- Where appropriate, will drill down to specific workspace

• Changing How IBM Develops and Delivers Software
- Client involvement from the beginning and throughout the development process
- Over 80 clients throughout North America and Europe
- Different size IT shops
- Different customers for each monitor
- Agile (transparent) development model validates use cases and functions as we go
- Monthly Reviews by customers who are using the tools
- Over 100 pieces of customer feedback driving the product reviews by monthly reviews and
demonstrations
- After each release, 30 and 90 day reviews and requested responses

• OMEGAMON customer-directed design focused on helping decrease costs and improve usage
- Simplify - Eliminate complexity and frustration
- Standardize - Align with existing IBM 3270 Applications
- Integrate - Move from silo monitoring towards composite views
- Minimize - Reduce footprint, install, configuration, and CPU
- Modernize - Make the 3270 Interface ‘Best of breed” - SME focused Problem Solving Scenarios
- Customize - Personalize User Interface

• OMEGAMON XE
- System Programmer scenarios for faster problem determination and availability management
- Customer Driven Development - Subject Matter Experts provided directions to solve problems.
- Requirements gathered with and prioritized by customer system programmers

• Simplify To Reduce Costs and Add Value
- Simplifying the Architecture
- Decreasing Maintenance Overhead
- Improving Time to Value

• Simplifying the Architecture

- Moving to simplified architecture driving decreased resource utilization without lose of current function
- Diagram of old versus new approach (single manager across OMEGAMON family)

• Enhanced Configuration and Maintenance capability with ITM 6.2.3 Self-Describing Agents
- Eliminate monitoring outages caused by ITM Server recycles
- Product upgrades/maintenance requires agent or RTEMS recycles only
- Eliminate maintenance upgrade errors:
- Applies to new installs, staged upgrades, and maintenance
- Crosschecks and validates version with installed data and framework
- Avoids inconsistent application data in ITM framework layers
- Self-describing framework extensible to new capabilities
- Eliminates application data DVDs and CDs:
-No extra distributed installs or upgrades for mainframe-centric customers
- Results:
- 80% improvement in FTE requirements
- 60% improvement in time for installation and maintenance
- 30% improvement in time to configure post installation

• How Self-Describing Agents works (ITM 6.2.3)
- Application data files includes CAT/ATRs, TEP workspaces, queries, history collection, help,
UI extensions (jar files)
- Application data files imbedded in monitoring agents and propagated to ITM servers
- Propagation executed only when a higher version is detected
- New application files, upgrades & updates installed without recycling servers
- PTFs deliver application data files with updated agent (always in sync)
- Eliminates install of mainframe application data files on distributed ITM servers
- Results: 80% improvement in FTE

• Simplify Customer Driven improvements
- Installation and Configuration enhancements for Parmgen - improve TTV
- Removal of ICAT as the primary way to Install and Configure
- Install without need of a distributed server
- Walks you through steps to complete configuration and customize a profile
- Automatically updates hundreds of configuration artifacts according to profile,
including Auto-discovery of system values

• Reducing customer costs

- The Truth about cutting costs with zIIPs
- BMC claims MainView zIIP enabled for their MainView product line
but limited only to z/OS and DB2 monitoring
- Computer Associates makes broad savings claims for SYSVIEW
What they don’t say is this is their first release using zIIPs and estimated
savings are based on their previous un-optimized solutions
- Other vendors sometimes hide consumption in system address spaces, often
claiming “apples-to-oranges” comparative advantages
- The Facts:
- OMEGAMON has been exploiting zIIP offload for years.
- OMEGAMON offloads processing for OMEGAMON z/OS, DB2, and CICS.
- OMEGAMON uses RMF as a data collector further reducing usage.
- With version 5.1, OMEGAMON improved performance and reduced CPU
usage in each monitor with improvement from 20%-50%

If you think your CPU utilization is too high, request an OMEGAMON Health
Check. IBM will be happy to help tune your system.

• System z Management - Join Now !
- developerworks
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/groups/service/html/communityview?communityUuid=5e65990a-9690-42e2-93b1-c2267be7620c

• Enhanced 3270 user interface

• OMEGAMON V5.1 Family products
- Improving the Subject Matter experts view using the enhanced 3270ui and still supporting
end to end views with the Tivoli Enterprise Portal
- Different UIs to support the different IT personas.
- Providing the same visibility (same view of the problem) to multiple IT folks while looking
at different UIs

• Business Agility with improved IT visibility now available with OMEGAMON V5.1 family
- Modernized and strengthened OMEGAMON product line for reduced resource usage and faster
problem resolution
- Increased System Availability with faster problem resolution
- Enhanced 3270 User Interface for SMEs
- Built-in Problem Solving Scenarios
- Improved Productivity with simplified information
- Faster Install/Configuration/Maintenance
- zEnterprise monitoring across EC12, 114 and zBX
- Reduced Costs with decreased resource usage
- Usage of zIIP specialty servers
- Simplified OMEGAMON architecture

• e3270 Demo (Mike Goodman)
- ISPF like but not ISPF - same look, touch, feel for all monitors
- Panel ID
- Subpanel Collapse / Expand Control
- Subpanel Close Control
- Toolbar (File Edit View Tools Options Help)
- Up / Down Scroll Controls
- Navigation Selection Field
- Starting Row Selection
- NAV1 / NAV2 Fields
- Auto Update On/Off
- Column Sort Control / Indicator
- Status Threshold Highlighting
- Emulators with APL can be various display sizes
- Bottleneck Analysis
- Monitor Contention
- Easy to See Problem Areas
- Same workspace – different Emulators (bottleneck analysis example)

• Contact Information
- Mike E Goodman - megoodma@us.ibm.com - 919-609-1543
- Paul Smith (Smitty) - paulmsm@us.ibm.com - 919-224-1806

•The meeting ended about 9:05 p.m.

Treasurer’s Report for November 2012

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $793.15 as of November 13, 2012.

Financial Report
3/01/2012 through 11/13/2012

Items of Interest


SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2012

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Nov. 27 - Subs
Dec. 25 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays


Mastering the Mainframe Online at Marist College

contributed by Ed Webb

From the MillenialMainframer.com:

“In the fall of 2003, I interviewed at a large insurer for a database administrator position.  I knew a bit about databases, but other requirements of the job were completely unfamiliar to me - including the operating system that was being used.  Strange acronyms like TSO, ISPF, JCL, and DB2 left me scratching my head - and this was before you could Google anything.  As part of the interview, I had the opportunity to shadow one of the DBAs.  I watched him navigate through the unfamiliar screens and sat trying to figure out what he was demonstrating.

I showed promise and, after I was hired, worked very hard to learn systems that descended from technologies older than I was.  But even equipped with a strong drive and helpful encouragement from colleagues, learning how mainframes operated was a massive effort.  My employer, who hadn’t hired someone without existing mainframe skills in over a decade, did not have a formal training plan in place.  In defense, this wasn’t uncommon.  When I started my career in data processing, groups like IBM's Academic Initiative and SHARE's zNextGen were in their infancy and weren't well known.  Instead, I relied solely on coworkers for training.  It took several months to understand what I now consider the "basics" of operating in a mainframe environment.

In 2007, I heard about an organization at Marist College called the IDCP or the Institute for Data Center Professionals.  The particular program that caught my attention was the z/OS Systems Programmer track of their "Enterprise Systems Education".  I had never taken any online courses, so I was skeptical of how much could be conveyed outside of a classroom.  A link to their website provided background information on all of the instructors, including their impressive accomplishments.  When I showed this to my coworkers and manager, they thought it was worth pursuing and so I enrolled in the system programming track.

Learn about the end of the story at http://www.millennialmainframer.com/2012/10/mastering-mainframe-online-experience.html


Early Registration Savings for SHARE in SF End on December 21, 2012

contributed by Ed Webb

SHARE will be in San Francisco, February 3-8, 2013 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. IBM will present its Preview of z/OS V2R1 and z/OSMF V2R1 as well as provide details on the newest zEnterprise system, the EC12.

Early Registration Savings of $200 ends on Friday, December 21, 2013.

Finalize your plans now. Go to share.org for details on registration and hotel reservations.


Early Support Program (ESP) for DB2 11 for z/OS Announced

contributed by Ed Webb

“DB2 V8 is out of service, DB2 9 is old news and end of marketing has been announced, and moving to DB2 10 is the “in thing” to do.  If you have been keeping score, you know that all this activity usually means something else is probably going to occur... and it did.
 
Last week, on October 3, 2012 to be exact, we announced the DB2 11 for z/OS Early Support Program.  IBM will be making DB2 11 available to select group of customers beginning on March 8, 2013.  You could think of this as a “beta”, although it is much much more in my opinion.”

Read the rest of Willie Favero’s DB2 11 blog entry including a link to the ESP announcement at http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/db2zos/early-support-program-esp-for-db2-11-for-zos-has-been-announced-53311.


Humor


Law of the Garbage Truck

contributed by Chris Blackshire

One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us.  My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us.
 
My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, 'Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!' This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call,
 
'The Law of the Garbage Truck.'
 
He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. Don't take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.
 
The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day.

Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so ...
 
Love the people who treat you right.
Pray for the ones who don't.
Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it!
 
Have a garbage-free day!

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

7 p.m.

Special Location: SAS Building F in Cary

Free Food: Subs, Drink, Dessert

Program:

Mainframe Virtual Tape

Speaker:

Brian Kithcart and Monica Bennett of EMC

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

First Class Postage

SPARTA Corporate Sponsors: