SPARTA News

June 2014

SPARTA President’s Corner

contributed by Ron Pimblett

Our SPARTA meeting has been shifted to Tuesday, July 1, with our Speaker from Hitachi who will provide an update on Hitachi storage for the first time in our History. Many thanks to Tom Schwartz for making this happen.

We can all reflect on the contributions that Brad Carson made to SPARTA over the years, June 19 marked one year since his passing after a courageous fight with cancer. Martha always came through with those special Cup Cakes. Our best wishes go out to her.

We were impressed last month with the zAware product and the frank discussion from Garth Godfrey, IBM development manager. It is clear that most systems programming people are eager to embrace tools that can help resolve issues under z/OS in a heartbeat if possible. IBM has created analytics products for most applications.

So what new skills are in demand for Mainframe Systems people beyond analytics? The big push in most businesses is in the area of Mobile Computing. There are hundreds of Mobile Devices and Apps that can overrun infrastructure. Embracing them at a Mainframe level can add value to the Data Center offering especially with the reliability inherent in the z Series. In the latest CIO magazine, Annabelle Bexiga, the CIO of TIAA-CREF, describes her philosophy of one solution for client facing teams. She says that they used to have to log into multiple different systems to answer client questions but now it is centralized on one system. TIAA-CREF is challenged to create value for consumers using all sorts of mobile, social and on-line access technologies. To meet expectations they are embracing social, mobile, analytics and cloud computing.

If Mobile computing is big now, where will it be in 5 years? Customers and employees are using their handheld technology for dozens of application areas including Storage Monitoring and apps like zAware, CICS and Omegamon, to mention a few.

Are Systems Programmers feeling more confident as time goes on in controlling what is clearly the future of IT? Can this become the domain of the mainframe like zLinux is starting to be?

Here is a link to the IBM site that exploits Mobile Computing for the z Enterprise, certainly worth a read.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/solutions/mobile.html

Let's get Mobile!!

Looking forward to hear Hitachi talk about their latest technologies on Tuesday, July 1, at LabCorp in RTP. See you there.

Ron Pimblett

Future Speakers

(subject to change)

July 1 (Special Date) - Hitachi Technologies by Tom Schwartz
July 29 - CICS Update by IBM
August 25 (Special Date) Baseball at Durham Bulls Athletic Park (DBAP)

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 May 20, 2014 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.

•Fifteen (15) people were present of which Thirteen (13) were 2014 members.

•Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions or their job hunting challenges.
•The web presentation was delivered between 7:47 p.m. and 9:12 p.m. (details below).

•The minutes of the April 2014 meeting were approved as published in the May 2014 newsletter.

•Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's Report. As of May 9, 2014, the balance is $1030.28. Motion was made and approved to accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the May 2014 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 at 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):

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

•The next SPARTA monthly meeting will be June 24, 2014 at LabCorp in RTP.

•Food for the June meeting will be subs.

•The 2014 dues are due ($30) starting in March 2014. Please see Tommy Thomas.

NEW BUSINESS

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

•There are currently 43 people on the SPARTA-RTP e-mailing list. There are no new additions since last month.

•Send any e-mail address changes to Chris Blackshire so he can update the SPARTA-RTP Listserv. You will be added by the moderator (Chris) sending you an invitation to Join the list. (ChrisBl@nc.rr.com)

•President’s Corner submissions are wanted. Please assist Ron Pimblett and Ed Webb 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 9:20 p.m.

PRESENTATION

• Presentation was given remotely by Garth Godfrey of IBM.
• Topic: zAware: Using Analytics to Improve System z Availability

• Agenda
 - Why IBM zAware?
 - What is IBM zAware and what can it detect?
 - Use of the IBM zAware GUI
 - Operating Requirements
 - Integration with other management products
 - Summary
 - References

• Why IBM zAware? (background)
 - Systems are more complex and more integrated than ever
 - Errors can occur anywhere in a complex system
 - Some problems are particularly…
   - Difficult to detect
     - Several allowable anomalies can build up over time
     - Symptoms / problems can manifest for hours or days
     - Problem can grow, cascade, snowball
   - Difficult to diagnose
     - Sometimes finding the system in error is a challenge
     - Many times finding the component in error is a challenge
     - Volume of data is not humanly consumable, especially when seconds count
 - Need information and insight

• IBM System z Advanced Workload Analysis Reporter (IBM zAware)
    (Smarter Computing Needs Smarter Monitoring)
 - New technology based on machine learning developed by IBM Research
 - Cutting edge pattern recognition techniques look at the health of a system to pinpoint deviations from the ‘norm’
 - High speed analytics facilitates the ability to consume large quantities of message logs
 - Improves problem diagnosis across a set of System z servers
 - Speeds up the time to decide on appropriate corrective actions on problems before they get bigger
 - Allow establishment of procedures to prevent re-occurrence

    zAware’s capacity as a ‘watch dog’ can help to detect unusual behavior in near real time

• IBM zAware can reduce time to repair to improve availability
 - Gathering of Diagnostic Information Shortens Business Impact time
 - Ineffective time spent in problem determination and trial and error. Incorrect problem identification may result in the wrong fixes being applied
 - More precise and early diagnosis can shorten impact time and help you to avoid a similar problem. Gain an edge in your ability to respond to events.

• IBM zAware – System Analytics for Availability
 - Identifies unusual system behavior of z/OS workloads
 - Runs in a special purpose firmware partition (isolated from production) (on zEC12 or zBC12)
 - Monitors zEC12 or other System z servers running z/OS v1.13 +PTFs or later
 - Requires OPERLOG

• Inside IBM zAware Analytics
 - OPERLOG is processed per-system
 - zAware recognizes any well-formed message IDs, including IBM and non-IBM products and customer applications
 - zAware summarizes the common message text and records the occurrences
 - zAware builds a model of normal behavior based on the last 90 days
     - Called “Training”
     - Automatically trains every 30 days
     - Can be forced manually
     - Customizable
     - Unusual days can be excluded from future models
 - z/OS utility is used to load historical logs into zAware

• Inside IBM zAware Analytics and what can it detect
 - Real-time OPERLOG data is compared to the model
 - Assigns a message anomaly score to indicate deviation from the model
     - Rare messages
     - Out of context from normal patterns
     - High counts
 - Uses z/OS-specific knowledge to influence the scores
 - Generates an interval anomaly score per 10 minute interval
     - Current interval is updated every 2 minutes
     - GUI shows number of unique message IDs (bar height)
     - GUI shows interval anomaly score (bar color)
 - Drill down on interval shows the message scores
 - XML output available via HTTP APIs to drive alerting

• Use of the IBM zAware GUI - Analysis View Examples
 - The System Anomaly Scores graph shows messages analysis data for each system in 10 minute intervals
 - For each interval, the bar height indicates the number of unique intervals
 - Click on an interval bar to access detailed message information
 - To view messaging analysis from other days, use the date selecter.

• Identify Unusual Behavior Quickly
  - Which z/OS image is having unusual message patterns?
     - High score generated by unusual messages or message patterns
     - GUI shows all systems or selected subsets
 - Which subsystem or component is abnormal?
     - Examine high-scoring messages
 - When did the behavior start?
     - Current 10 minute interval or earlier?
     - Which messages are unusual?
     - How often did the message occur?
     - When did the messages start to occur?
 - Were similar messages issued previously
     - Easily examine prior intervals or dates
 - Is the unusual behavior after some maintenance or upgrade?
- Easily pinpoint changes caused by new software levels, configuration settings.

• Customer Added Domain Knowledge = Ignore Messages
 - When a new workload is added to a system monitored by zAware
 - Software upgrade, workload movement
 - Generates messages that are not in the zAware model
 - New messages are flagged as anomalous (Orange/yellow bars on GUI Analysis)
 - Ignoring Messages for High anomaly scores on the Interval View
 - A) If a real problem is indicated,
   - Fix the problem on the monitored system
   - Check subsequent zAware Analysis to confirm the resolution
   - Do not mark these messages as ignored
 - B) If the messages are normal messages from the new workload,
   - Mark these as Ignore until next training
   - At the next training for this system, messages will be built into the model, and removed from the system's ignored list
 - C) If the messages are always ok     (normal, but infrequent)
    - Mark these as Ignore until manually restored
    - In subsequent analysis, the ignored messages will not contribute to the anomaly scores
    - This setting will persist after trainings
    - This reduces false positives, based on user input, so real problems are not masked

    This gives the user input into the IBM zAware rules.

• Operating Requirements (IBM zAware Server)
 - Logical partition on a zEC12 or zBC12 server
     - Runs on IFLs or general purpose CPs – may be dedicated or shared
     - Runs its own self-contained firmware stack
     - Recommended 2 partial engines
- Memory and DASD resources are dependent on 
     the number of monitored clients,
    amount of message traffic, 
    length of time data retained.
     - Minimum Memory is 4 GB for 6 clients with light message traffic (500 msgs/sec)
     - For > 6 clients     + 256 MB per client required
     - Estimated DASD storage is 500 GB (ECKD) + 5GB per client
 - Network resources
     - HiperSockets or shareable OSA ports or IEDN
     - IP address for partition
 - Browsers (minimum versions)
     - Internet Explorer 9
     - Firefox ESR 17
 - System z servers supported as IBM zAware monitored clients
      - zEC12
      - zBC12
      - IBM zEnterprise™ 196 (z196) or z114,
      - IBM System z10™ EC or BC
      - Prior generations that meet the OS and configuration requirements
 - Running z/OS 1.13 + PTFs or z/OS 2.1
     - APAR OA38747, APAR OA38613, APAR OA39256, APAR OA42095
 - System needs to be configured as a monoplex, system in a multisystem sysplex, or a member of a parallel sysplex
 - Using operations log (OPERLOG) as the hardcopy medium
 - Sysplex name + system name must uniquely identify system
 - Requires an OSA or IEDN or HiperSocket for IP network connection
 - z/OS zAware monitored client MIPs usage ~ 1%

• Integration With Other Management Products
 - IBM zAware Complements Your Existing Environment
 - Integration with z/OSMF
     - Using the z/OSMF GUI
     - Configure a new external link to access IBM zAware from z/OSMF
 - Administration > Links > Actions > New
     - Provide link name, SAF suffix, zAware GUI URL
     - Category – recommend Problem Determination
     - Define authority required to use the link   
 - APIs
     - Provides XML equivalent to GUI
 - Requires HTTPS (From z/OS, use AT-TLS)
 - HTTP GET/POST requests
     - Connect and authenticate to IBM zAware server
     - UserID known as a zAware user (e.g. LDAP)
 - Retrieve analysis for a monitored client
     - LPAR  Interval scores for date
     - INTERVAL    Message scores for a 10-minute interval
 - IBM Tivoli NetView for z/OS
     - Use the APIs to pull the IBM zAware results
     - Sample programs are available
 - Described in detail in the Redbook:
     - Extending z/OS System Management Functions with IBM zAware
     - The samples can be tailored to drive NetView message automation for high  anomaly scores:
     - CANZLOG – Browse consolidated logs for PD
 - Announced July 2013, Tivoli Integrated Service Management products use of IBM zAware results.
 - Other products can exploit the XML format results

• Summary
 - IBM zAware – Smarter Computing Needs Smart Monitoring
 - IBM zAware is a self learning, integrated solution that analyzes messages in near real time to provide insight into the behavior of your system
 - Benefits
     - Helps diagnose problems quickly and more accurately to improve service recovery time
     - Reduces risk by identifying “what changed” after maintenance.
     - Helpful when problems involve multiple teams
     - Easy-to-use graphical interface
     - Integrates with existing alerting environment

• References
 - IBM System z Advanced Workload Analysis Reporter (IBM zAware) Guide  SC27-2623-00
     http://www.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/bkserv/r13pdf/#E0Z 
   or IBMResourceLink Library → zEC12 → Publications
 - Redbook: Extending z/OS System Management Functions with IBM zAware  SF24-8070-00
     http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg248070.html?Open
 - IBM Mainframe Insights blog
     www.ibm.com.systemz
 - The Journey to IBM zAware
    http://www.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/entry/zaware?lang=en_us
 - zAware Installation and Startup
    http://www.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/entry/zaware_installation?lang=en_us
 - Top 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions About IBM zAware
    http://www.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/entry/zawarefaq?lang=en_us
 - IBM zAware Demo
    http://www.ibm.com/connections/blogs/systemz/entry/zawaredemo?lang=en_us
 - Available from “Books” group of Classic Style UI and the Welcome page of the
  Tree Style UI (& IBM Resource Link: Library->zEC12->Publications)
 - - IBM SC28-6919: Hardware Management Console Operations Guide (Version 2.12.0)
 - - IBM SC28-6920: Support Element Operations Guide (Version 2.12.0)
 - - IBM SB10-7030: Application Programming Interfaces
 - - IBM SC28-2605: Capacity on Demand User’s Guide
 - - IBM SB10-7154: Common Information Model (CIM) Management Interfaces
 - - IBM SB10-7156: PR/SM Planning Guide
 - - IBM SA22-1088: System Overview
 - Available from IBM Resource Link: Library->zEC12->Technical Notes
 - - System z Hardware Management Console Security
 - - System z Hardware Management Console Broadband Remote Support Facility
 - - System z Activation Profile Update and Processor Rules

• Contact Information
- Garth Godfrey of IBM - IBM zAware Development, Poughkeepsie, NY
- Work: 845-435-1101 - Email: ggodfrey@us.ibm.com
 

• The presentation and meeting ended about 9:20 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for June 2014

contributed by Tommy Thomas

The balance in the account is $942.62 as of June 17, 2014.

SPARTA Financial Report
3/01/2014 through 06/17/2014

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2014

contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire

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

IBM Redbooks Provide the Real Truth...And Much More

contributed by Ed Webb

From the SHARE President's Corner blog:

"Many, if not most, or all, mainframers are steadfastly "old school" about acquiring skills. That is, rather than learning, using, referencing, and servicing systems the way youngsters do with new smartphones – by experimentation – we read documentation. Bookshelves of manuals used to be mainframers' cherished possession (making shuffling offices or changing jobs a daunting physical challenge). While softcopy information has certain charms – portability and searchability are great – it lacks the impressiveness of a well-stocked library, hinders opening multiple manuals for simultaneous reference, and loses the traditional badge of office for system programmers or developers."

Check out the classic mainframe photo and discussion about IBM Redbooks at http://www.share.org/p/bl/et/blogid=2&blogaid=294