SPARTA News January 2014

January 2014

SPARTA President’s Corner

contributed by Ron Pimblett

For sure, 2013 was the most challenging year since SPARTA’s inception in 1988.

June 19th we lost Brad Carson to cancer. He was the ever diligent and “always up” champion of our SPARTA mainframe group. As we all know, his passing left a hole the size of Texas in our meeting room at LabCorp.

We continued with meetings and, despite a tough roster of possible speakers, had success in recruiting some excellent talks. The SHARE summaries by Ed Webb really have helped bring the topics at the SHARE events home to those of us unable to secure funding to attend. This year I’ll try to contribute more to our Newsletter and promise not to mention the possibility of a pet page ensemble more than twice in 2014.

Chris Blackshire kept all the detail together for the new Yahoo Groups which was a serious challenge seeing that Brad was the contact on the list and was going to require difficult documentation. Today, Chris has the new list well established and accurate. Special mention to Mike Lockey for keeping the announcements going out and the website up to date during 2013.

Looking forward to 2014, I believe that we need to attract more Mainframe shops to send a representative. Growing our group will also bring more cash into the treasury so that we can feel comfortable that we won’t run out of funding.

In addition, everyone should keep their eyes open for a very Senior Systems Programming Manager to take over the President’s position going forward.

My personal view, from a vendor’s perspective, is that Mainframe shops need to embrace new technologies including integrating more open systems designs into their strategies. Linux and Unix systems need to be integrated similar to the zBX systems, but maybe not as an expensive bolt-on. Cloud solutions are coming on strong and the mainframe shop should deploy at least one application to gain experience in 2014.

Lastly, since SPARTA represents our fellowship no matter what!... then it is essential that we should go out of our way when a Systems Programmer in our membership needs to be connected to a full time job. If we can satisfy that opportunity alone, then we can truly feel valuable to our trade.

Thank you for your support.

This month we host the return of our IBM Omegamon friends to talk about CICS monitoring. We’ll eat some Chicken as well at our meeting on January 28 at LabCorp in RTP. See you there.


Future Speakers
(subject to change)


Jan. 28 Omegamon XE for CICS by Joe Winterton of IBM
Feb. 25 TBD
Mar. 25 SHARE Reports by 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.

2013-2014 SPARTA
Board of Directors

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

Ron Pimblett - Vice President
MDI Data Systems 919-426-6518
866-634-3282
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.
Burlington, NC 27215

Ed Webb - Communications Director
SAS Institute Inc. 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 1912 T.W. 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-RTP Group. The newsletter is posted to the website about five (5) days before each meeting so you can prepare. The SPARTA-RTP Group is maintained by Chris Blackshire; if you have corrections or problems receiving your meeting notice, contact Chris at chrisbl@nc.rr.com.

October 2013 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V487 (dated October 27, 2013) are available from www.cbttape.org.

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

Minutes of the November 19, 2013 Meeting

•Meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Ron Pimblett, the Chapter Vice President.
•The meeting was held at LabCorp in RTP, N.C.
•Twenty (20) people were present of which thirteen (13) were members.
•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions or their job hunting challenges.
•The minutes of the October 29, 2013 meeting were approved as published in the November 2013 newsletter.
•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of November 13, 2013, the balance is $718.87. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the November 2013 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.

•Ron Pimblett reminded everyone to leave the LabCorp conference room clean.

•Future Speakers and Topics (subject to change based on internal politics, budget, the weather):

Date Company Speaker Topic
Jan. 28, 2014 IBM Paul (Smitty) Smith Omegamon Update
Feb. 25, 2014 TBD TBD TBD

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett (919-833-8426).

•The next SPARTA monthly meeting will be January 28 at LabCorp in RTP.

•Food for the January meeting will be chicken.


NEW BUSINESS

•Thanks to LabCorp (Tommy Thomas) for hosting the November meeting.

•There are currently 40 people on the SPARTA-RTP e-mailing list. There are currently 2 outstanding join invitations.

•Send any e-mail address changes to Chris Blackshire so he can update the SPARTA-RTP Listserv. You will be added by Chris sending you an invitation to Join the list.

•Please assist Ron Pimblett with ideas or try actually writing a President’s Corner article. If your shop is installing software or an OS process like Brad wrote about, please write about it.

•The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:30 p.m.

PRESENTATION

•Presentation was given by John Baker of MVS Solutions through WEBEX.

Topic: Can Capacity Planning and Finance Co-exist?

• About MVS Solutions
- Private, Canadian corporation, in business for over 25 years
- International installation base of around 200 customers and long time IBM partner
- Sole focus: z/OS Batch Automation and enterprise software cost reduction
- ThruPut Manager - Flagship Technology
- Enhance WLM and JES2
- Complements all job schedulers

• About John Baker
- 15 years at a large, international bank focusing on z/OS performance
- z hardware and software tuning, WLM, GDPS… i.e. lots of SAS, RMF, Omegamon
- 6 years at IntelliMagic focusing on Enterprise I/O performance
- Joined MVS Solutions this year focusing on overall z performance and cost reduction

• Managing Datacenter Costs
- Big issue, lots of pressure on management
- Can cut people
- Can cut hardware costs
- Can cut software costs
- Of the many opportunities, what ThruPut Manager brings to the table

• Managing z/OS Software Costs
- IBM provides sub-capacity pricing option
- You need sufficient power to run your largest, most important loads of the year
- You don’t need it all the time
- Sub-capacity pricing charges on what you use
- Can restrict usage by setting a cap

• IBM Software Charging
- Pay for software by usage of the LPAR or CEC, not capacity
- Based on highest usage of the month - calculated by the average over a 4 hour period (4HRA)
- Eligible software
- Most IBM system software products – z/OS, CICS, IMS, DB2, MQ, WebSphere, Netview
- Many other IBM products such as compilers.

• What’s the Benefit?
- Evens out the up and down usage during the day
- Even out or smoothes the 4 Hour Rolling Average
- Software charge based on Month via LPAR vs CEC

• Capping Options
- Hard capping - Firm usage value - no more, no less
- Soft capping - Usage level may vary above or below cap
- Defined Capacity - Used for LPAR
- Defined Capacity - LPAR Group Limit - Used for CEC

• Hard Capping
- “Sledgehammer” approach - guarantees limited capacity
- Impractical for most environments that have periodic peaks

• Defined Capacity
- Provides an MSU/hr charging limit for the 4HRA on an LPAR running z/OS native
- Works for products licensed on a small number of z/OS LPARs on this CEC
- May minimize costs for those products
- Not ideal for consolidated environments - May leave cycles on the table - Example
- LPAR A busy but capped
- LPAR B not busy
- CEC has available cycles and work is delayed in LPAR A

• LPAR Group Limit
- Provides an MSU/hr charging limit for the 4HRA for a group of native z/OS LPARs on the same CEC
- Most efficient option for products licensed on all z/OS LPARs
- Makes best use of the available cycles
- LPAR Group Limit may be combined with Defined Capacity

• How Does LPAR Group Limit Work?
- Each LPAR gets a ‘Group Share’ when capping occurs
- The Group Share is calculated by WLM in each LPAR independently
- Each WLM is aware of its LPAR Group calculation, but not the importance of the running work
- WLM donor-receiver model
- Donor - If the LPAR does not need its cap level it may set a lower cap
- Receiver - If the LPAR has a lot of demand and some other LPAR has cycles available

• The Impact of Capping
- It depends - on your weights and needs and goals
- Are they what you need for your workload goals?
- The difference between your weights and the cap
- Keep them reasonably close to avoid dramatic swings
- Goals must reflect real needs, especially when capped

• CPU weights: Take what you need
- Your weights specify what proportion of the processing capacity each partition is entitled to
- You can go over your weight if there are cycles available
- But when constrained with all partitions busy and capped – the weight is a major impact
- Question: Can your important workload goals be met while running at your weight?

• WLM Goals: Ask for enough…
- Poorly set Service Class goals can hurt
- If your online goals are too easily attainable you may usually exceed them when capped
- If your critical batch goals are too easy - you may miss due-out times

• WLM Goals: but not too much
- If your Service Class goals are too aggressive, higher importance work may become a donor
- Service may still be good but WLM statistics imply otherwise

• ThruPut Manager: Batch Automation
- Automation Edition
- Queueing, recalls, resource utilization and selection are managed based on selection thresholds and Batch Importance
- Checks Service Class to be sure it is receiving service before selecting a job in that class
- Selection of lower importance work slows down when CPU resource less available

• Queue Ordering Example: Development Job
- INVENTORY.DEVT
- Target: 5 minutes
- Acceptable: 15 minutes
- Batch Importance: 4

• Queue Ordering Example: Production Job
- INVENTORY.PROD
- Target: 1 minute
- Acceptable: 3 minutes
- Critical: 7 minutes
- Batch Importance: 2
- Critical Level: C2

• Queue Ordering Priority by Critical Level
- 1 Critical by Importance
- 2 Acceptable by % of Acceptable
- 3 Target by % of target

• Queue Ordering: Before Target
- 1 INVENTORY.DEVT (T=5, A=15, C=, I=4)
- 2 INVENTORY.PROD (T=1 A=3 C=7, L=C2, I=2)

• Queue Ordering: After Target but Before Acceptable
- 1 INVENTORY.DEVT (T=5 A=15, C=, I=4)
- 2 INVENTORY.PROD (T=1, A=3, C=7, L=C2, I=2)

• Queue Ordering: After Acceptable but Before Critical (Ordered by Batch Importance)
- 1 INVENTORY.DEVT (T=5 A=15, C=, I=4)
- 2 INVENTORY.PROD (T=1, A=3, C=7, L=C2, I=2)

• Queue Ordering: After Critical Ordered by Level
- 1 INVENTORY.PROD (T=1, A=3, C=7, L=C2, I=2)
- 2 INVENTORY.DEVT (T=5 A=15, C=, I=4)

• ThruPut Manager: Reducing Monthly Software Costs
- Automated Capacity Management (ACM)
- Designed to reduce costs while protecting loved ones
- 4-hour rolling average is monitored and batch selection is adjusted, based on importance, as the 4HRA approaches the cap level
- With ACM you set a capacity limit
- Defined Capacity
- LPAR Group Limit or
- TM AE “Target capacity” - Only restricts batch workload as target is neared

• ThruPut Manager ACM: How it works
- You specify up to five percentage levels of capacity at which TM AE will take actions
- Limit a category of batch to n concurrent jobs
- Stop selecting a category of batch
- Change the Service Class of a category of batch to one that’s Discretionary with a low Resource Group maximum, until things get better

• Initial Response
- “My costs are driven by online; batch is not an issue”
- But ALL workloads contribute – including discretionary batch
- “Management is afraid of the impact of capping on online so we don’t use soft-capping”
- Valid concern – ThruPut Manager AE can help!

• ThruPut Manager Solution
- 1. Capture SMF data for one month
- 2. Analyze the make up of the total load and calculate the current 4HRA
- 3. Determine the 4HRA for batch in each reporting period (by LPAR and physical machine)
- 4. Predict the cost impact by reducing the batch load as the 4HRA peak load level approaches

• ThruPut Manager MXG MSU program
- Reads MXG RMFINTRV to capture CPU and WLM stats for each interval
- Produces CSV files to be sent back
- A customizable report where you can
- Set the percentage of batch that may be deferred during peaks (based on business needs)
- Set your monthly MSU $ rates based on your IBM contract
- Result is the estimated monthly savings by implementing ThruPut Manager’s Automated Capacity Management (ACM) feature

• Observed Results
- Typical figures of anywhere between 18% and 37% of peak load was batch
- Most large customers were around 30%
- Typically 25% of that batch can be slowed/deferred during the peak
- Using a reasonable cost figure of $300 per MSU/hr (to the best of our knowledge that’s typical for installations running z/OS, CICS, IMS, DB2, MQ…) we are seeing significant savings

• A Customer Result with ACM
- One customer has been sending data tracking their progress with ACM
- They’ve been able to lower their cap significantly
- A sample customer chart shows the 4HRA climbing toward the cap but just skimming it

• Other ThruPut Manager Benefits
- Many products - Focus, SAS, Xpediter, Librarian, DYL280, …
- Can often restrict some software to a small LPAR
- Many products support LPAR pricing
- Good use for hard capping
- Can be difficult to do because of Security or local catalog

• Quick win: Automatic Isolate Where Possible
- License expensive ISV software to a small (low MSU) “penalty box” CEC
- Use TM Binding and Software Access Control to automatically restrict users to LPAR’s
- Simple setup – no JCL changes required
- Automatically routes work to an LPAR where the product is available
- Also prevents foreground TSO access from an unlicensed LPAR

• Things to Remember
- Cost control must be balanced with meeting the needs of the organization
- Set proper weights that reflect the importance, urgency and volume of the workloads
- Make sure your Service Class goals and importance levels match organizational needs
(WLM cannot manage your workloads well when constrained if these are poorly set)
- Batch on the same CEC as online but in a different LPAR can have a major impact
- All workloads contribute to the 4-hour Rolling Average (even discretionary batch)
- High batch workload on one LPAR may force the LPAR Group into capping, causing slowdowns to more important online workloads
- WLM is unaware of the importance of a load in another LPAR
- Example: one site filled up a batch LPAR on a test SYSplex with discretionary work – caused the 4HRA for the CEC to be very high and cost them $$$$$

• Summary - Soft Capping Works!
- You can buy hardware but software costs are higher and ongoing
- Sub-capacity pricing can save significant money on your monthly software bill – every month!
- Batch control is essential to protect Online
- Due diligence
- Know your workloads and organizational needs
- Understand the capabilities and limitations of your infrastructure

• Contact Information
- John Baker - at MVS Solutions Inc: 905-940-9404 Ext 304 - E-mail: jbaker@mvssol.com

• The presentation and discussions ended about 8:30 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for January 2014

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $624.15 as of January 14, 2014.

Financial Report
3/01/2013 through 01/14/2014

INCOME
Opening Balance 350.84
Dues 770.00
Misc. 0.00
TOTAL INCOME $1,120.84

EXPENSES
Gift Given 0.00
Food 418.66
Petty Cash 120.00
Bank Service Fees 9.00
P.O. Box 0.00
Web Site 0.00
TOTAL EXPENSE $547.66

BANK BALANCE 573.18
PETTY CASH($175) 50.97
TOTAL CASH $624.15

Items of Interest


SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2014
contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

Jan 28 - Chicken
Feb 25 - Subs
Mar 25 - BarBQ
Apr 29 - Pizza
May 20 - Chicken
June 24 - Subs
July 29 - BarBQ
Aug 25 - DBAP Buy Your Own (Monday night)
Sept 30 - Pizza
Oct 28 - Chicken
Dec 2 - Subs
Dec. 31 - No Meeting, Happy Holidays


SHARE Early Bird Registration Deadline Soon
contributed by Ed Webb

Registration is now open for SHARE in Anaheim, March 9-14, 2014. Join us for over 500 user-focused sessions, networking opportunities and hardware and software product highlights to stay at the forefront of the industry. Register by January 24, 2014 to secure Early Bird savings.

Host to all technical sessions, networking events and the SHARE Technology Exchange Expo, the Anaheim Marriott has everything SHARE attendees need under one roof. 

Anaheim Marriott
700 W. Convention Way
Anaheim, CA 92802
714.750.8000
$169/night [includes internet access]
$133/night for government employees (limited number available)


Redbooks Keeping Up With a Changing World
contributed by Ed Webb

“For decades, the IBM Redbooks* program has delivered invaluable technical information to users around the globe in the form of print documents. With the advent of the Internet, and particularly social media, IBM recognized new opportunities for outreach and for helping users get the most out of their systems as simply and efficiently as possible.”

The details of the ongoing changes to the IBM Redbook program are reviewed in a December 2013 article from IBM Systems Magazine.

“To address the shift, the Redbooks brand has transformed from a model of deep, best-practices content produced over long cycle times to a continuum ranging from that comprehensive content to succinct, connect-the-dots material that can be created rapidly and delivered over a variety of channels.”

Check out the entire article and its earlier intro article here.


Disco Duck
contributed by Ed Webb

Our SHARE friend, Mary Ann Matyaz, leader of the z/OS Core Technologies project, provides an introduction to our series about 50 Years of z/OS (OS/360).

“This blog has very little to do with disco, and nothing at all to do with ducks. With 2013 coming to a close, I started thinking about what a 1970 Systems Programmer would think of a 2013 Systems Programmer?

I'll call the 70's sysprog Travolta and the 2013 sysprog Bieber.”

See more about how the System Programmer world has changed in Mary Ann’s blog at SHARE (registration may be required).


What the Heck is RESTful about an API?
contributed by Ed Webb

“The REST acronym stands for Representational State Transfer. It is a simple stateless architecture that basically exploits the existing technology and protocols of the Web, generally HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol).

REST has emerged in the last few years alone as a predominant Web service design model, as a simpler alternative to Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). The RESTful Application Programming Interface (API) establishes a mapping between create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations and HTTP corresponding actions, respectively POST, GET,PUT and DELETE.

This IBM® Redpaper briefly describes the RESTful API and, demonstrates how it can used by clients to build a common management console for their XIV® storage as well as for other storage devices that support the RESTful API.”

Even if you do not have IBM XIV storage, the first part of this Redpaper is a good, brief explanation of the RESTful API with some helpful diagrams. Check it out here.


z/OS 2.1: 50 Years of Continuous Improvement and Innovation
contributed by Ed Webb

From SHARE’s President’s Corner (written by Joe Clabby, President of Clabby Analytics):

“In only a few months the mainframe becomes 50 years old.  And what this means to information technology (IT) buyers is that when you buy a mainframe, you’re buying fifty years of continuous improvements in performance and in manageability – and 50 years of investment protection (look at the age of some workloads still running on mainframes).  A great example of these types of improvements can be found in one of the mainframe’s operating systems, z/OS.

A closer look at z/OS shows an operating systems that has been designed around resource sharing (the mainframe is a “shared everything” architecture); around security (the System z processor includes on-chip cryptographic facilities and further crypto facilities are available in the systems design); around reliability and availability; around performance; and around integrity (look at the sheer number of transactions a mainframe can handle and consider how it protects data from failures).  This operating environment has been designed to support multiple and varied workloads concurrently – and can run the mainframe at 100% utilization rates for long, sustained periods of time.  It is decades ahead of some other architectures when it comes to virtualization, provisioning, and workload management.  Simply put: it is a marvel of software engineering.”

Learn more about what makes z/OS 2.1 the culmination of 50 years of OS/360 in the full blog post.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

7 p.m.

LabCorp in the RTP

Free Food: Chicken, Drink, Dessert

Program:

Omegamon XE for CICS on z/OS Update

Speaker:

Joe Winterton of IBM

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

First Class Postage

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