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Grow with Mainframes - In the world of data processing, there is nothing more reliable than Mainframes.

2008-12-13T16:36:00.003+05:30

Any seminar on careers in software begins with the nearly cliché sounding warning that "technology is changing so rapidly... what you learn today is obsolete tomorrow... ."

Probably true for some - client-server, networking, web. But, apparently, for the oldest elephants of Information Technology obsolete is not in the dictionary.

Commencing from the IBM 701 of 1952 to the IBM eServer zSeries 990 of 2003, Mainframes have come a long way in the world of data processing. And, for those looking for a career option in Mainframes, the future is rosy.

Reliability factor : Let's analyse why Mainframes will always be in demand and what opportunities they present career-wise. One of the most fundamental reasons is the reliability factor. Mainframes are not as susceptible to virus attacks as the emerging fourth-generation languages or open systems. Businesses like banking, retail, money markets and insurance, for instance, where huge data is processed every minute and where each failure can prove fatal to business, will never trust any other machine.

Mainframes are the software equivalent of Rolex in watches, or the Rolls Royce in cars. It seldom fails, and there is nothing more reliable.

Computation capacity : Another major factor in favour of Mainframes is the enormous computation capacity, which is surprising for something created over five decades ago and still ahead of most of the latest machines.

Most Fortune Corporations globally have, use and intend to continue Mainframes. Old giants like Ford and GE, which started with Mainframes, have stuck to them for obvious reasons. Another reason why we can bet on the eternal existence of these power horses is the potential cost of migration - for a machine with billions of lines of code, moving to client-server systems will cost phenomenally, a reason why companies corrected the Y2K bug than replace them.

Given the staying prowess of the Mainframes, the career options are also very stable. And since most of the Fortune companies employ their services, almost all major IT Service Providers work on them. Among bigger Indian players, TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam provide jobs on Mainframes, not to mention IBM itself, where one can look to working in the Research Department.

Options aplenty : "The market for Mainframes is very strong. There are lots of requirements for maintenance in Mainframe systems. The options in legacy systems are especially very lucrative," says Muralidhar Kumanduri, Associate Manager, Accenture Services.

Mainframe systems are considered aged and not many of the present generation software engineers are well versed with the technicalities of Mainframes. The natural dearth of resources in terms of human skill when it comes to maintenance of the Mainframe systems creates great demand.

The skills required to work on Mainframes are largely COBOL, CICS and DB2.

"Customer Information Control System (CICS), a front-end application, is a very hot option. About 65 per cent of business market employs Mainframes," says Vikas Kumar, a senior software engineer and module leader with a major IT firm, who has been working on Mainframes for more than three years.

"Resumes claiming experience in Mainframes get at least two major calls everyday," says Mr. Vikas, stressing the saleability of the field. A search on Monster.com or Naukri.com gives a good indication of the kind of demand for expertise in Mainframes.

Contrary to the myth that a job in Mainframes maintenance is boring and monotonous, Shiva K., a project leader, says, "once you get in, it adds a lot of value to your career and you have a feeling of having entered into the strata of the elite. It is both challenging and interesting."

Majority of the jobs are in to maintenance, while a small, but significant chunk of jobs are into

applications.

Applicants are hired. Starting as developers, they go up to the level of Project Managers. Indian software companies that frequently come up with openings in Mainframes are Infosys, Kanbay, Masteck, Polaris, Satyam, Wipro, Visualsoft, among others.

"The market for Mainframes will not see the downtrend. It is highly reliable and widely used," says Ayyappa Nagubandi, Chief Software Architect of TrulyIntelligent Technologies. "Unlike other software areas, it is not easy to make transition to Mainframe systems from other fields. This is because technology related to Mainframes is vast and one needs a certain level of expertise to start a career in the field. One should have a good grounding in COBOL to get going."

Where to learn? : There are very few institutions that provide genuine coaching on Mainframes. The Keane School of Excellence, at IIIT, Hyderabad, offers a certificate course in software technologies covering Mainframes.

But candidates making a foray into Mainframes should be extremely cautious about choosing the right kind of institute that offers an exhaustive course. If not a certificate course from premier institutes, one should, at least, opt for a training course from reputed and reliable institutes.

Young Mainframe Programmers are the Cat’s Meow.

2008-08-17T21:06:00.000+05:30

IBM today introduced a new line of mainframes, the massive computers that businesses have used to process data for decades.

Which raises the question: Where do businesses find people who remember how to program the things?

That’s a question IBM is grappling with, as well. Most computer-science students these days view mainframe programming as the tech equivalent of learning Latin. They’d rather learn Java, AJAX, Ruby on Rails and other hot new Web programming languages. So, since 2004, IBM has been trying to get colleges and universities to include mainframe classes in their curriculums. IBM estimates that 50,000 students have sat through a mainframe class since then.

Students like Elizabeth Bell, a 23-year old computer-programming student at Georgian College in Ontario, Canada, are starting to realize that while being a young mainframe programmer may not be sexy, it’s highly marketable. “There are so many legacy systems out there that it isn’t feasible to think that businesses will phase them out over the next 10 or 20 years,” she tells the Business Technology Blog. Rather than compete with 50 other Web designers for the handful of programming jobs that use the hot technologies of the moment – technologies that Bell says she knows – she taught herself COBOL, a mainframe computer language invented in 1959.

Bell says there are advantages to knowing an older technology. Sure, she probably won’t get a job at a startup. But she did land one at the Bank of Montreal that she didn’t even have to apply for: The bank sought her out because of her mainframe skills. And she’s not competing with any other people her age for managerial positions that are bound to come up. We asked her if it ever got annoying listening to her colleagues reminisce about Woodstock. She didn’t bite.

“I may be the youngest now,” she tells us. “But there are smart, practical kids who are in school because they want a career who realize that the mainframe is the way to go.”

The future looks bright for the mainframe.

2008-08-17T20:47:00.003+05:30

Majority of IT managers surveyed said they will continue to use mainframes for legacy apps and move new workloads to the platform.

The future looks bright for the mainframe as a majority of IT managers report they will continue to use the systems for legacy applications and start moving new workloads that could benefit from the mainframe's availability and scalability onto the platform.

In its annual survey of 1,100 mainframe users, management software maker BMC discovered that IT's planned use for the mainframe as a computing platform continues to grow. For instance, 65 percent of respondents said the mainframe platform will continue to grow and attract new workloads in their environment, compared with 52 percent of respondents who said the same in the 2007 survey. Thirty percent said that the mainframe will continue as a viable long-term platform, but restricted to legacy workloads. And 4 percent indicated mainframe users should consider an exit strategy in the next five years.

Fewer organizations surveyed this year also plan to eliminate their mainframe environment in the short term. According to BMC's findings, 59 percent of respondents said they would be ridding themselves of the mainframe in less than three years, compared with 74 percent in 2007. Thirty-six percent said they would work toward removing mainframes in three to six years and 6 percent expected to keep mainframes in house for more than six years. (Compare server products.)

Nearly three-fourths of those surveyed said the availability advantages that the mainframe offers keep the systems running in their IT shops. For 65 percent the mainframe offers a superior centralized data serving environment. Sixty-two percent believe that transaction throughput requirements are best suited to the platform, and the same number value the mainframe's security strengths.

"In terms of stability, the mainframe is probably the best machine for transaction crunching. We service 2,000 end users at any given time, so having that kind of flexibility provides us with the ability to continue to support the health care environment while the mainframe processes applications and passes them down to other systems," says Paul Baquet Jr., a senior systems analyst at Duke Health Technology Solutions who oversees enterprise infrastructure and mainframe services and uses BMC software to monitor the environment.

Other reasons survey respondents choose to keep mainframes in-house include the ability to integrate the legacy platform with newer systems. For instance, 44 percent said that access to the platform is increasing through Web services and service-oriented architecture integration projects. And 42 percent reported they are leveraging legacy applications to create new business applications. Nearly one-third said specialty MIPS are supporting new applications and reducing overall mainframe total cost of ownership. And 16 percent said they are consolidating existing distributed workloads back to the mainframe.

"The mainframe is getting smaller and smaller, and the scalability just keeps getting better," Banquet says. "There is a place for the mainframe and there is a place for distributed systems. People in the industry are finding ways to make these work better together, but the mainframe is a very reliable machine and the distributed system just a junior still trying to grow up and be the mainframe."

z/OS New Age Performance Monitoring : Concepts & Directions

2008-06-24T08:22:00.002+05:30

By Norman D. Hollander

In todays complex data center environments, monitoring performance remains an important function. Methods applied in the past worked well for those old environments. This article explores some of the new age concepts and directions we must adopt to provide effective resource utilization and take the necessary corrective actions to protect our precious resources.

We need to accept several concepts that differ from the way we traditionally view performance data. Some of these fit nicely into the previously discussed historical perspectives, while some are more appropriate for how we should view performance today.

A processor (physical or logical) running at 100 percent utilization is not necessarily a problem. Workload Manager (WLM) tends to keep the processor busy. As long as Importance 1 and 2 workloads in their related service class periods are meeting their goals, why is this a problem? This does presume heterogeneous workload and a good WLM service policy.

The WLM Performance Index (PI) is a principle indicator of system performance. We need to monitor this at a system and Sysplex viewpoint. Are defined goals being met? Are the PIs appropriate for the workloads running in the associated service class periods? Is any subsystem’s performance suffering? Validating goals is an iterative process.

A system utilizing real storage at 100 percent is not necessarily a problem. WLM tends to keep the real storage full. The real issue is paging and, more important, what type? Who is paging? Many mission-critical business applications don’t tolerate any kind of paging. With real storage so inexpensive, it’s easy to add real storage to solve that kind of performance challenge. A system utilizing virtual common storage near 100 percent may be a serious problem. Many operating system components have moved their common storage requirements above the line and above the bar. System Queue Area (SQA) may be overflowing into Common Storage Area (CSA), which may not be a real problem. But when CSA becomes full, there could be a real problem.

Coupling facility performance is one of the critical metrics to overall system performance. A poorly configured, poorly tuned coupling facility will severely impact performance of the components and applications using it. The availability of multiple coupling facilities with sufficient capacity allows mission-critical applications to continue in outage scenarios. It’s important to understand who is using the coupling facilities and how well they’re servicing those users.

Cross System Communications Facility (XCF) performance is an important metric to overall system performance. Poorly defined XCF transport classes will negatively impact performance of the system components and applications using it. The definition of multiple transport classes with proper MESSAGELENGTH and buffers will ensure that CPU usage in the XCFAS address space will be optimal. It’s important to understand who is using the XCF facilities and how well they’re servicing those users.

DASD I/O should not be monitored at a device level (may be applicable to robust tape environments). With large numbers of volumes in many of today’s data centers, I/O monitoring must occur on an exception basis. Monitoring at the higher storage controller level is often beneficial. The metrics to look for include:

• Contention for specific devices
• Who is waiting?
• Where’s the time being spent to do the I/O?
• Is WLM involved? (If not, maybe it should be.)

Parallel Access Volumes (PAVs), Hiper PAVs, and I/O priority can help with I/O bottlenecks.

What’s Next?

Before moving into new directions for monitoring, we first need to incorporate the new age concepts just discussed. We need to:

• Display only relevant information and exceptions to the appropriate teams responsible for monitoring and managing our systems.
• Establish a new “expected client performance service” rating. Integrating more autonomic processes into our automation solutions will be important to the success of enterprise performance monitoring.

Tips & Tricks for z/OS Storage Managers - B. Curtis Hall

2008-06-17T14:40:00.004+05:30

Most storage administrators didn’t choose that profession; recent headcount reductions have often shifted the responsibility to other technical support staff members. Often, storage administrators have had other primary jobs; they haven’t had the luxury of taking time from their daily job to concentrate on training and learning a new skillset.

But storage won’t just manage itself. A newly hired or newly appointed storage manager can soften the impact of doing more with less and can help a company work smarter. Planning and organization skills can help the new storage manager make the transition less painful, increase productivity, and gain measurable results. Time invested at the beginning of the new job can have significant payout in the coming months. This article presents several steps a new storage manager can take to become more productive in the OS/390 or z/OS environment.

1. Obtain a copy of the previous storage manager’s JCL library. This library will have most of the jobs, setup utilities, and prewritten procedures needed to successfully manage the new environment.

2. Track down and obtain a copy of the Standards and Procedures Guide for Storage Management. The documentation will be useful in making modifications to existing procedures such as System-Managed Storage (SMS), Asynchronous Communications Server (ACS) routines, Generation Data Group (GDG) builds, Volume Table of Contents (VTOC) and VSAM Volume Data Set (VVDS) sizing in the shop, storage migration schedule start and end times, restoring data sets, backing up and copying data sets, SMS Management Class retention information, and Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) information. If this manual isn’t currently available, start organizing one. The manual will benefit you during off-hour support issues and will be your salvation when you later try to get in some vacation time.

3. Obtain mainframe access immediately. Almost all organizations provide offsite access to the mainframe. It’s a necessity to carry both a cell phone and a pager. Time is of the essence when storage problems occur. Most companies will reimburse their employee for DSL service, a pager, and a cell phone. The financial impact of downtime, or of slow response time created by storage problems, easily offsets the expense.

4. Gain the knowledge necessary to do your job well. Education classes, hands-on training, conferences, and trade magazines are the best means of gaining knowledge. Mainframe hardware and software vendors are a good source for this education. There are also companies specializing in this field. At a minimum, take a basic Storage 101 class covering storage-related system software, and vendor education on the disk hardware and software used at the site. If you’ll also be responsible for the tape system, you must understand the hardware and software involved there, too. This tape knowledge might need to encompass managing hardware such as silos, virtual systems, and extra dense drives. You must understand all the hardware and software related to your storage systems.

Networking with other storage managers is invaluable. “Picking the brain” of existing, long-term storage managers is an important way to gain knowledge. This keeps you, as a new manager, from re-inventing the wheel. When you try to absorb the knowledge of others, you’ll be amazed by the backgrounds of those who have been in the OS/390 or z/OS world for a long time. At some time in their careers, most have been in the same position as any other novice storage manager. Network locally with other companies through any introductions you can arrange, and participate in storage user groups. Most issues you’re facing are similar to those solved by others in the field.

Be sure your reading list includes these magazines and periodicals: z/Journal, Cheryl Watson’s TUNING Letter, Information Week, and ComputerWorld. IBM once published a manual titled How to Lead an Effective Storage Management Group. It was excellent; but it’s no longer in print. Additional sources from IBM include the Redbook series. All IBM information can be accessed through their Website.

5. Automate your storage procedures. Although most mainframe shops have started tasks to perform storage management, some don’t. If a batch process controls the storage management system, ensure the jobs are executed through a scheduling product. Automate other storage procedures such as capacity planning, storage volume reporting, storage migration activities, backup activities, and recall activities. HSMs have these reporting functions built into the product, but most require manual effort to extract the information. The reporting functions should be automated for quick, easy analysis.

6. Evaluate and purchase a capable storage-reporting tool. I’ve been a storage manager for almost 20 years and have evaluated several dozen storage-reporting tools. Most tools can produce the reports you need to manage a storage environment. The biggest issue for these products is scalability. Most tools aren’t capable of scaling up and growing with the storage farms. The reporting tool should be flexible and able to report on the whole DASD farm or just a subset of it. The tool should be capable of drilling down to the storage group, storage volume, and the data set levels. It should be able to execute an action at the data set level, including migrating, recalling, deleting, renaming, backing up, and reporting. The reporting tool must be capable of summarizing and reporting on all storage management activities. The tool must be flexible enough to produce ad hoc reports based on several attributes of the stored data, including data set names, size, block-size, record format, storage group names, and management class names. This tool must be fast, easily used, and support both Time Sharing Option (TSO) and ISPF. Mainframe storage reporting should be and remain a mainframe tool. This type of tool will let you access and evaluate the entire mainframe environment in less than 30 minutes daily, and frequently during the day, if necessary.

You should have knowledge of a high-level language such as SAS or Easytrieve. This type of language lets you create solutions that significantly exceed the capabilities of IBM’s ISMF tool. You also should be familiar with a non-disruptive volume mover such as Innovation’s FDRPAS or Softek’s TDMF. These tools are useful for moving entire volumes without impacting data use or the rest of the environment. No stand-alone time is needed to accomplish the entire volume move. Depending on the hardware you use at your shop, you’ll get much value from EMC Control Center or Catalog Solution, IBM utilities, and DFDSS, to name a few. You’ll find that proficiency in some of the Microsoft software products, such as Excel, is invaluable, and will give you the power to help express yourself clearly and graphically.

A challenge you may encounter in today’s environment is gaining a thorough understanding and mastery of the many iterations of Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) technology, as offered by the various hardware vendors, and what each can provide in your shop. Knowledge of RAID-1, RAID-S, RAID-5 and RAID-10 technology and the pros and cons of each can make your organization a success or failure. Further knowledge of the hardware’s storage internals, such as caching, disk adapters and hard drives, will help you when making hardware purchase decisions.

Don’t forget about the mirroring capabilities of the storage currently on the market. Be sure the hardware you choose will accommodate current and future needs. Don’t buy all the “bells and whistles” unless you plan to use them. Sometimes, you can have unused extras on hardware that can cause vendor microcode problems in your storage complex; you don’t need a “Cadillac solution for a Volkswagen implementation.”

7. Join a user group. Knowledge sharing and networking within various user groups can be beneficial. IBM’s SHARE, SAS Users Group International (SUGI), and the Computer Measurement Group (CMG) are just a few of the support groups available. Members of these organizations are willing to share information freely on storage management procedures and methods. Some of these organizations require membership dues, which your employer will probably pay. IBM and EMC each have storage symposiums that meet annually and cover current and future storage technologies. Since these are two prominent vendors, it’s wise to arrange to attend their symposiums when possible. You should also attend customer presentations in which presenters often share storage solutions they developed internally to meet their shops’ specific challenges.

8. Improve your communication skills. Since you need to interact with user groups and higher management, good communication is a requirement. If this is a weak area for you, join a support group geared toward improving your communication skills. Toastmasters International is an example. Effective communication is a skill you must constantly hone anyway, so time spent here is useful no matter which direction your career takes.

As a first-time storage manager, be sure you’re ready to enjoy learning a whole new world. Everyday challenges and rewards will quickly become apparent. The longer you explore this field, the more valuable you’ll become in managing any storage complex. If you don’t learn something new each day, you need to keep digging to advance your knowledge. Welcome to the world of storage managers. Enjoy!

Tasks for a New Storage Manager

Here’s a partial list of some common tasks a storage manager should perform on a set schedule:

Daily:
Monitor space usage for the critical storage groups
Ensure SMS volumes are in the correct SMS status (enabled/disabled)
Identify volumes that have disabled VTOC indexes and correct
Monitor backup and migration jobs and identify data sets that aren’t cataloged.

Weekly:
Defrag essential storage
Monitor third-party software
Monitor DFHSM CDS file (MCDS, BCDS, and OCDS) and DFHSM tape recycle process.

Preventive measures (daily and weekly):
Identify large Keyed Sequence Data Set (KSDS) VSAM nearing the 4GB limit, data sets not using optimum block sizes, and under-allocated files
Monitor Partitioned Data Sets(s) (PDSes) nearing 16 extents or in need of file compression.

Good Luck!

My daughter started pre-school today

2008-06-02T10:15:00.002+05:30

My daughter "Nandana" started going to junior KG today and I feel excited and sad because it seems like yesterday that she was a bundle of joy in my arms. It is hard to see our little one leave, because we are so use to them being there with us, and we are use to being there to protect them. Just the idea of them not being there for you to protect is enough to set off the attack. I am so sad right now. Yet I am so happy! It’s only the first day but it seems they grow up so fast and I m panicking! Maybe the next time will be better for me.

Well I think it's just normal that we are so concerned with our child's first day of school. We are really worried how a child will cope up in the stress of school. If she will be able to have friends and will be able to adapt to the new activities she will have from this day. Well I hope I will get relaxed the next day and hope my daughter will enjoy her stay on school.

IBM System z10 Enterprise Class

2008-06-01T15:53:00.003+05:30

The future runs on System z : In today’s world, IT is woven in to almost everything that a business does and consequently is pivotal to a business. Some of the key requirements today are the need to maximize return on investments by deploying resources designed to drive efficiencies and economies of scale, managing growth through resources that can scale to meet changing business demands, reducing risk by reducing the threat of lost productivity through downtime or security breaches, reducing complexity by reversing the trend of server proliferation and enabling business innovation by deploying resources that can help protect existing investments while also enabling those new technologies that can aid in business transformation.

The IBM System z10™ Enterprise Class (z10 EC) delivers a world class enterprise server designed to meet these business needs. The z10 EC provides new levels of performance and capacity for growth and large scale consolidation, improved security, resiliency and availability to reduce risk and introduces just in time resource deployment to help respond to changing business requirements. As environmental concerns raise the focus on energy consumption, the z10 EC is designed to reduce energy usage and save floor space when consolidating distributed servers. Specialty engines continue to help users expand the use of the mainframe for a broad set of applications, while helping to lower the cost of ownership. The z10 EC is at the core of the enhanced System z™ platform that delivers technologies that businesses need today along with a foundation to drive future business growth.

Benefit Feature/Function
Availability/Reliability
CICS subspace group facility
CICS subsystem storage protect
Concurrent Book Add
Concurrent ESCON, FICON, OSA-E and Coupling Link maintenance
Concurrent Hardware Management Console (HMC) and Support Element
Concurrent Licensed Internal Code (LIC) maintenance for CP, SAP, SE, PR/SM™, LPAR, HMC, OSA-E
Concurrent power and thermal maintenance
Dual Support Elements
Dynamic Change to Partition Cryptographic Coprocessor Configuration
Dynamic Channel Path Management
Dynamic I/O Reconfiguration
Dynamic memory sparing
Dynamic Oscillator Switchover
Dynamic LCSS Add
Dynamic Subchannel Set Add
Dynamic Partition Add
Enhanced Application Preservation
Enhanced Book Availability
Enhanced Driver Maintenance
Enhanced Dynamic Reconfiguration Management
Enhanced Firmware Simulation
Failure Containment for MBA
Fault Tolerant Interconnect Design
FICON Purge Path Extended
FICON Express4 Pluggable Optics for individual servicing
Fixed HSA
Frame Bolt Down Feature
Hybrid cooling
Multipath IPL—ESCON (CNC), FICON (FC) with z/OS
N+1 power supply technology
OSA-Express2 Link Aggregation Support
OSA-Express2 Network Traffic Analyzer
Partial memory restart
Point to Point SMP Fabric
QDIO Diagnostic Synchronization
Redundant I/O Interconnect
Remote operations support
Sparing for Storage Protect Preservation Keys
System Assist Processor (SAP) reassignment and sparing
System-Initiated CHPID Reconfiguration
Transparent CP Sparing

Security
Advanced encryption standard (AES) 128, 192, 256
Certified for LPAR isolation
Configurable Crypto Express2 (secure coprocessor or SSL acceleration)
CP Assist for Cryptographic Function
Crypto Express2 FIPS 140-2 Level 4 Certified
Data Encryption Standards (DES), Triple DES
Designed to meet Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 5 (EAL5) certification for the security of its logical partitions
LDAP support for HMC user authentication
Open Architecture Distributed Transaction Enablement
Pseudo random number generator (PRNG)
Remote key load for ATMs
Secure hash algorithm-256 (SHA-256), -384, -512
SSL Acceleration for Linux® and z/OS
Tamper-proof Cryptographic Support

Capacity on Demand
API for Capacity Provisioning Management
API for On/Off CoD activation
Capacity Backup for both full and subcapacity CPs
Capacity Backup for zAAP, zIIP, IFL, ICF and SAP
Capacity for Planned Event (CPE)
Capacity Upgrade on Demand
Customer Initiated upgrades
On/Off Capacity on Demand
More than 200 configuration records may be staged on Support Element
Up to four active configurations stored on SEEPROM

Specialty Engines
Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL)
Internal Coupling Facility (ICF)
System z10 Application Assist Processor (zAAP)
System z10 Integrated Information Processor (zIIP)

I/O Connectivity
InfiniBand® (IFB) host bus (6 GBps each); 24 IFBs for I/O HCA2-C Fanout
IBM ESCON CTC native and basic mode
FCP support for SCSI devices by Linux, z/VM® and z/VSE (disks)
Fibre Connection (FICON) 1, 2, 4, Gbps auto-negotiation
Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) 1, 2, 4 Gbps auto-negotiation
FICON CTC
FICON full duplex data transfer
Full fabric FCP support
IBM ESCON half duplex data transfer
Multiple Image Facility (MIF)
Multiple Subchannel Sets (MSS)
N_Port ID virtualization (NPIV) for FCP
QDIO designed for high speed networking
Up to four Logical Channel SubSystems (LCSS)

Networking
IBM HiperSockets IPv6
OSA for NCP (OSN)
OSA Layer 3 VMAC
OSA-Express2 Layer 2 Support
OSA-Express Integrated Console Controller (1000BASE-T Ethernet)
OSA-Express2 (Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 1000BASE-T Ethernet)
OSA-Express3 (10 Gigabit Ethernet)5

Cluster Systems
Dynamic CF Dispatching
Dynamic ICF Expansion
Shared ICFs and CPs
Transparent ICF sparing
System-Managed CF Structured Duplexing
Sysplex Distributor
GDPS
Parallel Sysplex® clustering technology
12x IB-DDR (6 GBps)
InfiniBand Coupling links5
Internal Coupling channel (IC)
Integrated Cluster Bus-4 (ICB-4)
InterSystem Channel-3 (Peer mode only) (ISC-3)
MBA and HCA-O Fanout
ETR–Sysplex Timer attachment (standard)
Server Time Protocol (STP)
NTP Client support for STP
z/VM Virtual Parallel Sysplex

Performance
Compare-and-move extended
DB2® sort assist
Flexible Memory Options
Hardware-assisted data compression
Hardware Decimal Floating Point
HiperDispatch
Hipersorting
IBM Hiperbatch™
IEEE binary floating point support for advanced IBM Lotus® Domino® and Java™ performance
Long Displacement Facility
Modified Indirect Data Address Word (MIDAW) Facility
OSA Dynamic LAN idle
Performed Locked Operations for enhanced IP performance
Up to 1.5 TB memory

Management
(SE) maintenance
HMC Panel Wizard
HMC and SE IPv6 Support
Internal Battery Feature
Power/thermal
IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager (AEM) for Linux on System z Support
LPAR Group Capacity Limits
ESCON sparing
Cancel I/O Requests
Power Monitoring Display
Power Estimation tool

z/Architecture
Intelligent Resource Director
Superscalar Processor
Tri-modal addressability
Up to 60 LPARs each with 64-bit central memory addressability

Mainframe Talent: An Endangered Species

2008-05-17T20:55:00.002+05:30

Big iron still gets big use, but lack of personnel is a growing problem.

It's estimated that 60% of corporate America's data sits in mainframes. IBM (NYSE: IBM), the premier mainframe vendor, says its big iron business grew 25% last year. And for the first time in more than two decades, mainframe pricing went up. All of these are signs that mainframes are still vital IT systems.Nonetheless, General Mills Inc. is shutting down its Amdahl mainframe. The $13 billion maker of such foods as Cheerios, Betty Crocker cake mixes, and Yoplait yogurt is getting rid of the mainframe because it can't find replacements for its retiring mainframe experts, and it doesn't want to pay the high prices mainframe consultants command.

It's clear that there's a human-resources problem when it comes to the mainframe. According to studies done by Meta Group, 60% of the people in data centers housing mainframes are 50 or older; 10% are 60 or older. When comparing IT staffers who work on Unix and Windows servers with those who can work on mainframes, a striking age gap emerges: for example, 22% of Unix and Windows staffers are around the age of 30, compared with just 5% of mainframe workers who are around that age. Only 8% of Unix-and Windows-trained IT employees are 50 or older, according to the studies. Meta Group analyst Rob Schaefer says the mainframe isn't as sexy a system as Windows, Unix-based Web servers, or Linux. "For our mainframe customers, attrition is disproportionate compared to the other platforms," he says, "and no new blood is coming in."

Half the mainframe talent has retired from Mission Linen Supply, Szerwo says.
However, not everyone will abandon mainframes in the foreseeable future. That's because of the huge investments companies have already made in mainframe applications and the millions of dollars it can take to migrate those applications to other platforms or host them at outsourcing shops.

There continue to be efforts designed to help businesses that are keeping their mainframes. For one, the mainframe is becoming more automated, so it requires fewer IT specialists to run and maintain it. Now, says Gartner industry analyst John Phelps, many companies are maintaining their mainframe environments, rather than developing new applications for them, and that typically requires about one-third the number of people. Some colleges are teaching mainframe skills and even getting funding from mainframe vendors such as IBM.

Also, tools are available to help ease integration between mainframe data, typically residing in DB2 and Cobol applications, and client-server and Web applications. Xbridge's Host Data Connect software, for example, can convert Cobol data into a Windows format.

The number of people with mainframe skills for such things as the MVS operating system, Cobol, and the Customer Information Control System started to erode during the '80s, says Ron Hankison, president and CEO of Xbridge. "By the end of that decade, only a few people knew what was going on with MVS, and eyes started to glaze over at the mention of Cobol, CICS, and the mainframe's transaction monitor," Hankison says. Still, he says there are 5 million to 9 million new lines of Cobol code written each year. "It's almost impossible to get rid of the mainframe," he says.

IBM also is trying to ease mainframe pressures, Gartner's Phelps says. It's providing grants to 40 universities and colleges, including Colorado State University, Marist College, and the University of Georgia, so they'll teach mainframe-oriented skills as part of their curriculum. It wouldn't disclose the value of the various grants. Not surprisingly, most of the IBM-funded education centers on Linux on the mainframe. IBM has ambitious plans under way to develop a Linux-only mainframe. The plans are to merge Linux with the hardware remote-access service functionality of the mainframe. Analysts say that a Linux mainframe lacks the heart of an IBM mainframe, the z/OS operating system, but it has the identical high-end hardware capabilities.

A wonderful product called Image Focus for z/OS

2008-05-13T13:44:00.007+05:30

IMAGE Focus is a software product from NewEra Software, Inc. It uses proprietary technology to track changes to operating system parameters, and provides the ability to do a ’Virtual IPL’ of a z/OS image to ensure that a real IPL will not encounter invalid parameters.

Image Focus runs as a started task under z/OS. It works by providing a series of “inspectors”. These inspectors - OS-Inspector, Sysplex-Inspector, JES-Inspector and VTAM-Inspector - perform the actual checking of each component.

IMAGE Focus is composed of three components, each of which may be optionally installed and operated independently of the others. These components are:

Recovery : The IMAGE Focus recovery started task is designed to maintain its own independent communications subsystem and provides ISPF application support to a single locally-attached non-SNA 3270 console. This provides the ability to logon, check, and fix problems when VTAM, JES, or TSO are unavailable at IPL time. This potentially avoids the need to perform unnecessary IPLs following the discovery of a problem; that is, an installation may “forward” fix problems found early in the IPL process.

Multi-user : When installed as a VTAM application to support multiple simultaneous users, IMAGE Focus maintains a multi-user started task. This provides the ability for users to logon using their external security product controlled userids and perform checking, browsing, and editing of system parameters.

Background : The IMAGE Focus background started task reports IPL changes that would result in future IPL

failures to a designated user or group through the TSO Broadcast Facility or via E-mail. These notices are sent at intervals controlled by IMAGE Focus, or optionally by the installation’s job scheduling package.

The checking process starts with the LOADxx member whose value is entered by the user, or as a variable if run in batch. It checks that IPL text exists on the IPL volume and that the SYS1.NUCLEUS data set can be opened. It processes each PARMLIB and PROCLIB member for syntactical correctness and related data sets for referential integrity and attribute characteristics. This process may be run in the foreground by a user, in batch, or on a continuous basis. During this continuous inspection, the inspector will determine if there are any problems with system definitions, warn of potential failures, and compile reports on suspect components. These reports identify errors in critical data sets, document their locations, and catalog the data sets that may prevent a successful future IPL.

This checking extends to JES, VTAM and TCP/IP and the product provides the ability to create installation-specific checking routines over and above those supplied.
The product provides a “what if” option that includes support for new releases of the operating system. This allows the user to plug existing IPL parameters into the next version of z/OS and check that they are still viable.

Key Features

The Image FOCUS Core, IFOCORE, includes the following:

• Operating System Inspection - Supporting all releases of MVS and z/OS through V1R8, evaluates operating system configuration components for weaknesses that will cause IPL failure.

• Dynamic Element Inspection - Pinpoints changes in the LnkLst, LpaLst and ApfLst that have not been updated in the system configuration.

• System Component Inspection - Allows for the inspection of individual system components. Within the Operating System, for example, individual z/OS Parmlib Members maybe inspected.

• New z/OS Release Analysis - Isolates areas in your current operating system configuration that will need to change in order to become functional when used with a new release of z/OS.

• Controlled Image Monitoring - Fully automates the interval inspection of Controlled Images and the reporting of results.

• Blueprinting & Change Detection - Blueprints the z/OS configuration for Controlled Images, detecting and reporting changes

• Subsystem Recovery - Provides access to ISPF system repair functions when TSO is not available. This Image FOCUS Core function is often called 'NOTSO".

z/OS Catalog fault finding and fixing

2008-05-08T13:19:00.002+05:30

This page describes how to use raw IDCAMS to investigate and fix catalog problems. It is usually easier to use a maintenance product for this. The shortcuts below will take you to specific points on the page.

Listing catalog information

The ICF catalog structure is complex, so if you have a problem, the first thing to work out is exactly which component is broken. Typically you'll be passed a problem ticket from someone who cannot access his data. Start by querying the catalog status for an affected file, by using the listcat command. The easiest way is to pick up a file list from ISPF option 3.4, then type the following line command against a file.

LISTCAT ENT(/) ALL

Here's a tip which you probably know already. You'll find yourself using the listcat command all the time. Shortcut it by sticking the following clist into a command library in your logon procedure. Type TSO LISTA to find an appropriate library. Add the clist as member name LC.

PROC 1 MEMBER
LISTC ENT(&MEMBER) ALL
EXIT CODE(0)

Now when you want to list the catalog entry for a dataset, all you need to do is type LC against it. The LISTCAT output tells you; which catalog the dataset entry is in, which volume the catalog thinks the dataset is on, and SMS class information. You get a lot more detail for VSAM datasets.

Checking the physical condition of a Catalog

If you are getting a lot of problems in the same catalog, then it is possible you have a physical error on the catalog dataset (it is just a VSAM KSDS). Physical errors often cause the catalog backups to fail too. If you use LISTCAT ENT(/) ALL against a catalog, it will tell you which master catalog it is in, which volume it is on, and a list of all the aliases which point to it. To see the full VSAM information, you need to use listcat ent(/) catalog(/) all

To check the physical status of the catalog, run the following IDCAMS statements in batch

EXAMINE NAME( -
CATALOG.ICFUSER.VOL001 - ) -
INDEXTEST DATATEST -
ERRORLIMIT(50)

and hopefully you see the output

IDC01700I INDEXTEST BEGINS
IDC01724I INDEXTEST COMPLETE - NO ERRORS DETECTED
IDC01701I DATATEST BEGINS
IDC01709I DATATEST COMPLETE - NO ERRORS DETECTED

If the examine reports problems, then you might have to recover the catalog, as described on the next page. However, before you start to recover, try an IDCAMS verify first, as it might just be that the file was not closed properly. The syntax is

VERIFY DATASET(catalog.name)

However, if you have a catalog maintenance product onsite, it will have functions to allow you to fix physical catalog errors. The maintenance product section has more details.

Checking the logical Catalog condition

The following IDCAMS command will check that the dataset entries in a catalog are complete. For example, it will check that VSAM truenames are associated with a cluster record.

DIAGNOSE ICFCATALOG -
INDATASET(CATALOG.ICFUSER.VOL001) -
LIST

and you should see
IDC01360I THE FOLLOWING ENTRIES HAD NO ERRORS:
followed by a list of all the entries

If your diagnose runs clean, but you still get catalog errors, try refreshing the catalog buffers using the console command

F CATALOG,CLOSE(catalog.name)

The following command will check out the logical structure of a VVDS

//DD1 DD DISP=SHR,DSN=SYS1.VVDS.VVOL001
//SYSIN DD *
DIAGNOSE VVDS -
INFILE(DD1) -
LIST

All the previous two commands do is check out that a single catalog entity is correct. What you need, is to ensure all the catalog components are consistent.

//DD1 DD DISP=SHR,DSN=SYS1.VVDS.VVOL001
//SYSIN DD *
DIAGNOSE ICFCATALOG -
INDATASET(Catalog.name) -
COMPAREDD(DD1)

This will check that the entries in a catalog are consistent with those in one VVDS. It does not check out the entries in all the other VVDS datasets. To find out which VVDSs are referenced by a catalog, use the command

listcat level(sys1.vvds) catalog(CATALOG.ICFUSER.TSG)

Two errors are possible. If the VVDS contains datasets, but there are no catalog entries for them, create them by using

DEFINE CLUSTER (NAME(SYS1.VVDS.Vvolser) VOLUME(volser)-
NONINDEXED RECATALOG) -
CATALOG(catalog.name)

If the Catalog contains entries, but they are not in the VVDS and don't physically exist, use

DELETE SYS1.VVDS.Vvolser NOSCRATCH CATALOG(catalog.name)

The next command will validate a VVDS against a catalog

//DD1 DD DISP=SHR,DSN=SYS1.VVDS.VVOL001
//SYSIN DD *
DIAGNOSE VVDS -
INFILE(DD1) -

COMPAREDS(Catalog.name)

If you end up with a missing VSAM Volume Record (VVR) for one component of a VSAM file, then do a delete / noscratch at the cluster level first to clean things up. That leaves all the components uncatalogued. Then do a define without the recatalog parameter, specifying the correct volumes and allocated space for the file you are fixing. So in the IDCAMS statement below, change the dataset name, volumes and space as appropriate.

DEFINE CLUSTER -
(NAME(OPROD.TEST)) -
DATA (NAME(OPROD.TEST.DATA) VOL(V3003F) TRK(3,1) ) -
INDEX (NAME(OPROD.TEST.INDEX) VOL(V30038) TRK(1,1) )

IBM removed support for VSAM parameters IMBED and REPLICATE some time ago. They must be removed from all catalogs before you install z/OS 1.8 or they will cause abends.

The number of processing strings is quite critical to catalog performance as they control the number of possible parallel read requests. The default value is 2, but this is too low. Consider changing your strings 5 or 7, depending on how busy it is. You will also need the correct number of data and index buffers. 5 data buffers and 7 index buffers are about right for 5 strings. If you define more buffers than this you are probably just wasting storage.

Extended Catalog Sharing can improve performance between LPARs as this puts the VVDS information into the coupling facility. This was problematical at first but seems to be stable now.

You may also get response time problems in a shared environment if you are converting hardware reserves to dataset enqueues with CA-MIM. Consider using GRS in a STAR configuration instead.

z/OS VSAM Recovery

2008-05-06T14:54:00.002+05:30

VSAM files are typically used by on-line transaction based applications. VSAM files used by a DBMS can use the DBMS forward recovery process. VSAM files driven by CICS need traditional backup methods that involve bringing the systems down at some point overnight, then copying the data off to tape. If the file gets deleted or corrupted, then all transactions made since the backup are lost. This is unacceptable to businesses today, so VSAM updates are often recorded in transaction logs, so the file can be rolled forward to the point of failure. Recovery usually involves a restore from the latest backup, then a rollforward through the logs. These processes are discussed below.

Basic Recovery from backup

DFDSS recovery

Any successful depends on a good backup first. With DFDSS, it is probably best to specify the parameters SELECTMulti(first) and Sphere to get good VSAM backups. Selectmulti(first) means that if this is the first portion of a multi-volume dataset, then DFDSS will go out and find all the other portions and dump them together. An alternative is Selectmulti(any), which means that if the volume contains any portion of a multi-volume file, DFDSS will find and backup the complete file. This can be expensive if you have a lot of multi-volume files spread over lots of disks, as you will end up taking multiple backups of each file. Sphere means dump all portions of a VSAM file, including alternate indexes and paths.

If you do the backup correctly, you should be able to just do a standard dataset restore specifying the VSAM cluster name, as long as you also specify SPHERE to get all the associated AIX clusters and paths back too. If the cluster was dumped without SPHERE, then you need to restore any Alternate Indexes as seperate clusters, and build the paths with IDCAMS commands.

FDRABR recovery

FDRABR will handle single volume VSAM files easily. you simply select the file you want to restore using the base cluster name. FDRABR will then restore all parts of the file, including alternative indexes, but FDRABR will not restore paths. You need to do that yourself using IDCAMS. The command is

DEFINE PATH ( NAME(aix.cluster.name.PATH) )

Multi-volume restores are a bit harder. If you have multi-volume datasets, its your responsibility to make sure that all the volumes are dumped at the same time, so all the parts are consistent. If the backup is ok, then a restore should be as simple as

RESTORE TYPE=ABR,DYNTAPE,DSNENQ=USE

SELECT DSN=cluster.name

FDRABR should then go away, work out which volume backups it needs, dynamically mount the tapes, dynamically mount the output volumes, and restore the cluster. You need the same number of output volumes as the original file, with sufficient space on each. FDRABR restores each part of the file as a physical sequential, with a temporary volser ####Vx. Once it restores the last part, it catalogs the file up correctly as VSAM, with the correct volsers.

If the restore fails, then the 'VSAM special considerations' section of the FDR manual will assist.

VSAM Forward Recovery

If you record all updates to a VSAM file in a seperate log, and timestamp those updates, then you can use a technique called 'Forward Recovery' to get the file back to any point in time. CICS, the IBM transaction monitor, records transaction logs. If you use raw VSAM and want to recover to a point in time, you may need a third party product to provide logging facilities. The basic requirements for VSAM forward recovery are -

A Recovery Point, which is a time at which you took a full backup of all your VSAM datasets using one of the techniques above. This provides you with a backup copy of the whole file, which you should take at regular intervals, daily or possibly weekly.

A Journal, which is a chronologically ordered list of all the changes made to datasets since a Recovery Point. The Journals (or Logs) will only contain updates made to the file. You can write CICS journals to disk or tape, and write to a single file, or flip between files. Single files are easier to maintain, but will fill up quickly if there is a lot of update activity. Journal management is used to keep track of multiple files, and present them to the recovery program in the right order.

Forward recovery is a two stage process. First the dataset is backed out to the position it was in at the recovery point by restoring backup copies. Secondly all dataset changes that have been journalled since the recovery point are applied.

Fixing VSAM file components

To delete a VSAM file, you just delete the cluster entry, and all the components are deleted with it. You can either do this with an IDCAMS DELETE job, or simply type DEL against the VSAM cluster name on a 3.4 listing (this is explained in the Z/OS utility section)

If you have VSAM components without a cluster, then you can catalog them up using an IDCAMS RECATALOG command as below. You need to know the volumes the the uncatalogued components are held on

DEFINE CLUSTER -
(NAME(PIN.MVSOLZAX.ZMG) -
RECATALOG) -
DATA (NAME(PIN.MVSOLZAX.ZMG.DATA) VOLUMES(DV000E) ) - INDEX (NAME(PIN.MVSOLZAX.ZMG.INDEX) VOLUMES(DV003B) )

Alternatively you can delete the uncatalogued components using IDCAMS statements like

//DD1 DD VOL=SER=DV000E,DISP=SHR,UNIT=DISK
//DD2 DD VOL=SER=DV003B,DISP=SHR,UNIT=DISK
//SYSIN DD *
DELETE PIN.MVSOLZAX.ZMG.DATA - VVR FILE(DD1) -
CATALOG(CATALOG.ICFUSER.USER4)
DELETE PIN.MVSOLZAX.ZMG.INDEX - VVR FILE(DD2) -
CATALOG(CATALOG.ICFUSER.USER4)

The TRUENAME is a Catalog record that relates a VSAM component to its cluster. Sometimes, usually after a failed attempt to delete a VSAM file, you can be left with an orphaned truename record in the catalog. If this happens you cannot recreate the file, you will get duplicate name failures if you try. The answer is to use IDCAMS DELETE with the TRUENAME parameter as below.

DELETE PIN.MVSOLZAX.ZMG.DATA - TRUENAME

z/OS VSAM Striping

2008-05-05T15:26:00.002+05:30

VSAM striping can be used to improve the performance of datasets that cannot cope with the IO rate from a single volume. In general, VSAM datasets with a high random access pattern benefited from being spread over several volumes. Aa an example, I once had a problem DB2 database that was very heavily accessed and really suffered from poor performance. This was fixed by making it go multi-volume. However, this is not the same as Striping. Striping means that each control interval in the file is written to another disk, so the dataset is spread evenly over several volumes. True striping is considered to improve sequential performance. RAID disks stripe datasets over physical volumes at hardware level, but this still appears as one logical volume to z/OS, as z/Os will still schedule one IO at a time to it. PAV aliases fixed that problem as they permit multiple concurrent IOs to one logical volume, so maybe striping is not as useful as it was. Be aware that if you use PAV, VSAM striping may make performance worse. However, if you want striping, this is how you do it.

Striping will only work for VSAM files that are allocated in Extended Format. To do this, the dataset must be SMS managed and be allocated with a dataclass that has a 'Data Set Name Type' of 'EXT'. Striping is not supported for Alternate Indexes or VSAM files using RLS. You specify that you want striping on a Storage Class. There are two different ways to do this, using Sustained Data Rate (SDR) or Guaranteed Space with an SDR greater than 0.

SDR: within the storage class definition set the 'Sustained Data Rate' parameter to a value that should be a multiple of four. The system will then divide that number by four to determine the number of stripes to use. For example, if you set SDR to 16, the system allocates 4 stripes (assuming you use 3390 format disks).

Guaranteed Space: If you set SDR > 0 and set the Guaranteed Space parameter to 'Y' then the system will use as many stripes as the number of volumes or units that you specify in your dataset allocation. VOLUMES(* * * *) or UNIT=(3390,4) should both allocate four stripes. Note that SMS may allocate fewer stripes if it does not have enough volumes with the right characteristics to support your request.

If you define a storageclass called 'STRIPED', then to allocated a striped file, you either code STORCLAS(STRIPED) in your IDCAMS allocation, or pick a dataset pattern and put a clause in your STORCLAS ACS routine so datasets matching that pattern get the STRIPED storage class. To convert a file to striped, rename the old file and all its components, re-allocate the original file with a STRIPED storage class, then IDCAMS REPRO the data from the old file to the new one.

Bangalore : The rising divorce rate in the IT sector

2008-05-01T17:15:00.002+05:30

The Information Technology boom in Bangalore is not unknown. However, everything comes with a price. Statistics reveal that in 2006 alone, 1,246 cases of divorce pertaining to those in the IT sector have landed in the matrimonial courts in Bangalore. Financial freedom, lack of time at home, erratic working hours, work pressure, financial security and stress are being seen as the main reasons for this fiasco. The worrying factor is that the number of divorce cases pertaining to those in the IT sector has seen a steady rise since 2003. In 2003, the number of cases from the IT sector was 283 while in 2004 it went upto 526. Statistics available show that in 2005 the figure went up to 946 and in 2006 the figure was 1,246.

The year 2007 has not been too kind. The statistics available till June 2007 state that the number of divorce cases from the IT sector is 828 already. Experts state that the figure is likely to increase by the end of the year. What is more shocking is that divorce cases from the IT sector seem to be contributing to the number in a big way.

Do mainframes have a future in India?

2008-04-30T19:31:00.004+05:30

This is one debate that has raged on for years is the mainframe dead, and is client/server king? Events like 9/11, which demonstrated the need for fault-tolerant computing, have re-ignited the relevance of this debate. Stanley Glancy finds out more on the current market trends for these technologies.

The advent of minicomputers in the seventies and desktop PCs in the eighties was expected to ring the death knell for mainframes, which were considered to be large, inflexible, expensive and difficult to use. Desktops were not only inexpensive, but could also be connected through a network to a central server, enabling organisations to store huge amounts of data. But doomsayers were proved wrong when despite stiff competition, the mainframe continued to maintain a steady growth rate. And in the current scenario, where organisations (after 9/11) have increased spend on storage solutions, there is a trend which indicates that mainframes may gain a bigger share in the IT budgets of CIOs.

Kishore Modak feels that Linux has been the main engine for the growth of the mainframe market in India

For instance, other than traditional mainframe users like the banking-financial services sector and manufacturing behemoths, even unlikely candidates like universities and the travel industry have been choosing mainframes over newer technologies. Says V L Mehta, director of IT at Mukand Engineers, “More than 70 percent of the world’s data still resides on mainframes. The market is growing in terms of revamping the older mainframes and adding new features and software to the oldies. Also, the new mainframes are smaller, cheaper, more powerful and e-business ready, so the market is growing steadily.”

Though these are small encouraging trends, the picture is not completely clear. For instance, a Meta Group report states that mainframes won’t be able to match the price and performance improvements (close to 35 percent a year) of Intel-based servers, which are emerging with mainframe-like capabilities. In India too, very few mainframes have been purchased and installed in the past 3-4 years. But this has been due to policy issues rather than technology choices. India missed an era of mainframe and legacy systems due to the absence of global IT majors in the country from the late seventies till the early nineties. Barring large government organisations and public sector companies, mainframes were not seen anywhere else. The mainframe market grew in the late nineties during the Y2K scare, and many companies seized the opportunity. Agrees Kishore Modak, country manager for the zSeries Enterprise Systems Group at IBM India, the only global mainframe vendor to have a presence here, “IBM exited India in the seventies and returned only in the nineties. This gap of close to 20 years put a dampener on the adoption of mainframes here. Awareness about mainframes is only now picking up. The industry is realising the importance of converting mission-critical and large volume applications from distributed processing back to centralised processing for better control and management, disaster recovery, security and business continuity.” According to market sources, IBM’s mainframe business has been growing at a steady 12-15 percent per quarter.

The impact of client/server

One reason for the slow adoption of mainframes has been the advent of client/server architecture. Client/server technology with its myriad attractions was expected to dry up the market for mainframes. Not only was this technology capable of storing macroscopic amounts of data, it was also flexible, extremely easy to handle, and comparatively inexpensive. But while many organisations did adopt client/server systems, very few actually gave up the mainframe. Most companies have managed to achieve a perfect blend of the two technologies to meet their computing needs. However, smaller organisations, due to the huge cost associated with maintaining mainframes, have migrated to client/server systems.

The high cost of owning a mainframe was also expected to influence corporate decisions to opt for client/server technology. Though this has certainly made client/server an attractive proposal to many, companies desirous of using IT for strategic purposes do not mind the added cost of a mainframe. Mainframe loyalists say that there is also a myth about the cost advantage of client/server over mainframes. Explains Modak, “A single mainframe can reduce the cost of maintaining hundreds of servers. The cost difference seems high when you compare the price of a single server with that of a mainframe. But people have to look at it from the point of view of a total data centre. Only then will they realise that the actual cost difference is not much.”

The IBM zSeries, for example, enables server consolidation by handling the workload of hundreds of servers. It not only provides organisations with a lower total cost of ownership—through consolidation of Unix, Windows NT, and Linux applications to Linux on zSeries—but is also an application development platform for large customers. Further, fault tolerance is built into all mainframes, reducing downtime to the bare minimum. Another problem which customers face with client/server systems is that unlike mainframes these systems often come from different suppliers, and the various components may not be integrated or adapted to the user company’s needs. This issue is minimised by a mainframe.

Sectors

Verticals currently using mainframes include stock exchanges and depositories, utilities, airlines, railways, armed forces, e-business portals with heavy traffic, oil-sector PSUs, manufacturing giants, the travel industry, banks and financial institutions. These industries cannot do without mainframes since they run mission-critical applications that require high security and reliability. They also have huge databases, which can be managed only by a mainframe.

The banking segment has traditionally been a heavy mainframe user. But with many banks migrating to client/server, this sector has seen a sharp decline in mainframe usage. Says Modak, “It is true that many of the smaller banks with fewer branches have opted for client/server, but most of the larger banks remain loyal customers. There has actually been increasing demand from banks for mainframe technology—especially after 9/11—for managing their disaster recovery needs; this is because the quality of service offered by mainframes is very mission-critical oriented.” The Reserve Bank of India, one of IBM’s largest customers in the banking segment, is also one of the most intensive mainframe users in India.

Usage of mainframes has also increased in the airline industry with Indian Airlines running mission-critical applications on IBM’s zSeries. Even universities have shown a keen interest in training students on mainframes.

Another vertical that is a heavy user of mainframes is what is popularly known as the computer-related services industry. Elaborates Modak, “The software development industry has been a key focus area for us as we expect to see strong growth in this sector. IT giants like Wipro and Infosys do their development work here in India due to the cost/benefit factor. Since they deal with terabytes of data and also run mission-critical applications, a mainframe is the safest bet. Not only does it offer a favourable cost/benefit ratio, it also provides high reliability and security required in large-scale processing work, which no other currently-available technology can provide.”

More than 70 percent of the world’s data still resides on mainframes, says V l mehta
Benefits Return on investment (RoI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) are the key factors organisations look at before installing something as expensive as a mainframe. But according to Mehta, RoI is a very relative issue and such comparisons cannot give a real picture unless it is case-specific. Says he, “RoI and expensive are relative terms and depend on what one is looking for in terms of mission criticality of a business application. Of course, if one can get the same solution at a cheaper price one should go for it.”

Compared to client/server, mainframes do work out cheaper in the long run. A study conducted by LinuxWorld on the subject states that running one IBM mainframe uses less power than running 750 Sun or PC servers. This would be a real benefit, however trivial, next to the cost of the Linux and VM (virtual machine) licenses, if the mainframe could handle the same load. Another benefit is that the mainframe allows partitioning of resources to run different applications simultaneously. Using partitioning software, a mainframe can be split into several independent computers that share the same hardware. IBM has demonstrated the running of tens of thousands of Linux computers on a single mainframe. Mainframes also offer easy access to open source and Internet-related applications.

Linux

But which catalyst will provide the necessary boost for the growth of the mainframe market in India? Replies Modak, “The main engine for growth has been the adoption of Linux. Customers have discovered that Linux provides a favourable TCO and gives them flexibility in management of costs.” But there are various conflicting reports on whether Linux will actually help IBM grow its mainframe business. A report published by the Meta Group says that though mainframes running Linux have some advantages in the short run, in another 4-5 years these advantages will be irrelevant as Unix and Windows 2000-based systems flesh out increasingly robust, mainframe-like management capabilities—partitioning, workload management, reconfiguration and prioritisation. This will make users think twice about the premium they would have to pay for mainframes.

However, a Giga Group report thinks otherwise. According to Giga, mainframe technology is beyond the first phase of adoption, and has already made deep inroads into the financial services sector. While it’s true that other technologies have been trying to bridge the gap, IBM has not been sitting idle. The company has been making substantial investments in research and development.

IBM’s introduction of the z800 makes it possible to run Linux as a single operating system, ensuring ease-of-use. This, plus its ability to run hundreds of applications together makes it attractive to many organisations. Says Modak, “Earlier there were a lot of applications in the open space but you couldn’t run them on mainframes. We had specific applications available only on the mainframe. But Linux has changed that by offering higher uptime. A whole host of applications are now being made available through Linux.” Companies are under pressure to optimise their existing IT investments. This, plus other factors like availability of lower-cost systems, increasing support for Linux applications, and newer workloads from IBM, are expected to drive the growth of mainframe technology. Giga also predicts that more companies will use zSeries Linux environments for application serving combined with back-end database serving residing in a zSeries z/OS environment.

Conclusion

While it is difficult to predict the general future of mainframes, in India it may be a different scenario altogether. IBM may be able to gain a stronger foothold in the Indian market with its cost-effective Linux-based mainframes. Also, unlike earlier mainframes, the current set of machines are easier to handle and occupy less real estate—which may swing the tide in IBM’s favour.
Most analysts believe that while small organisations will continue to prefer client/server based architectures, sectors like telecom and the government will continue to favour mainframes.

IBM System z10 at a glance

2008-04-30T17:07:00.005+05:30

The IBM System z10 EC is a world-class enterprise server designed to meet your business needs. The System z10 EC is built on the inherent strengths of the IBM System z platform and is designed to deliver new technologies and virtualization that provide improvements in price/performance for key new workloads. The System z10 EC further extends System z leadership in key capabilities with the delivery of expanded scalability for growth and large-scale consolidation, improved security and availability to reduce risk, and just-in-time capacity deployment, helping to respond to changing business requirements. The System z10 EC delivers:
# Improved total system capacity in a 64-way server, offering increased levels of performance and scalability to help enable new business growth.

# z10 quad-core 4.4 GHz processor chips that can help improve the execution of CPU-intensive workloads.

# Up to 1.5 terabytes of available real memory per server for growing application needs (with up to 1 TB real memory per LPAR).

# Increased scalability with 36 available subcapacity settings.

# Just-in-time deployment of capacity resources which can improve flexibility when making temporary or permanent changes. Activation can be further simplified and automated using z/OS® Capacity Provisioning (available on z/OS V1.9 with PTF and on z/OS V1.10, when available).

# New temporary capacity offering Capacity for Planned Event (CPE), a variation of Capacity Back Up (CBU). CPE can be used when capacity is unallocated, but available, and is needed for a short-term event.

# A new 16 GB fixed Hardware System Area (HSA) which is managed separately from customer memory. This fixed HSA is designed to improve availability by avoiding outages.

# Memory and books that are interconnected with a point-to-point symmetric multi processor (SMP) network running with an InfiniBand host bus bandwidth at 6 GBps designed to deliver improved performance.

# The new InfiniBand Coupling Links (planned to be available second quarter 2008) with a link data rate of 6 GBps, designed to provide a high-speed solution and increased distance (150 meters) compared to ICB-4 (10 meters).

# The new OSA-Express3 10 GbE LR (planned to be available second quarter 2008) with double the port density, increased throughput, and reduced latency.

# HiperSockets improvements with Multiple Write Facility for increased performance and Layer 2 support to host IP and non-IP workloads.

# Encryption accelerator provided on quad-core chip, which is designed to provide high-speed cryptography for protecting data in storage. CP Assist for Cryptographic Function (CPACF) offers more protection and security options with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 192 and 256 and stronger hash algorithm with Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-512 and SHA-384).

# HiperDispatch for improved efficiencies between hardware and the z/OS operating system (z/OS 1.7 and above).

# Hardware decimal floating point unit on each core on the Processor Unit (PU), which can aid in decimal floating point calculations and is designed to deliver performance improvements and precision in execution.

# Large page support (1 megabyte pages).

# Up to 336 FICON™ Express4 channels.

# Fiber Quick Connect (FQC), a fiber harness integrated in the System z10 EC frame for a 'quick' connect to ESCON® and FICON LX channels.

# Support for IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager (AEM) for Linux™ on System z for a single view of actual energy usage across multiple heterogeneous IBM platforms within the infrastructure. AEM V3.1 is a key component of IBM's Cool Blue portfolio within Project Big Green.1

# The IBM System z9 Enterprise Class (z9 EC) and System z9 Business Class (z9 BC) servers are the last servers to support participation in the same Parallel Sysplex with IBM eServer zSeries 900 (z90), IBM eServer zSeries 800 (z800), and older System/390 Parallel Enterprise Server systems.

Overview

The System z10 EC is a marriage of evolution and revolution, building on the inherent strengths of the System z™ platform, delivering new technologies and virtualization that are designed to offer improvements in price / performance for key workloads as well as enabling a new range of solutions. The z10 EC further extends the leadership of System z in key capabilities with the delivery of expanded scalability for growth and large-scale consolidation, availability to help reduce risk and improve flexibility to respond to changing business requirements, and improved security. The z10 EC is at the core of the enhanced System z platform that is designed to deliver technologies that business needs today along with a foundation to drive future business growth.
With a modular book design, the z10 EC E64 is designed to provide up to 1.7 times the total system capacity of the z9 EC Model S54 and up to three times the available memory of the z9 EC. Significant steps have been taken in the area of server availability in the z10 EC design. Preplanning requirements are minimized by delivering a fixed, reserved Hardware System Area (HSA) and new capabilities intended to allow you to seamlessly create logical partitions (LPARs), include logical subsystems, change logical processor definitions in an LPAR, and add cryptographic capabilities for an LPAR without a power-on reset.

z10 EC introduces just-in-time deployment of capacity resources designed to provide more flexibility to dynamically change capacity when business requirements change. You are no longer limited by one offering configuration; instead you can define one or more flexible configurations that can be used to solve multiple temporary situations. You can now have multiple configurations active at once and the configurations themselves are flexible so you can activate only what is needed from your defined configuration. As long as your total z10 EC infrastructure can support the maximums that are defined, they can be delivered. A significant change is the ability to add permanent capacity to the server when you are in a temporary state. The combination of these updates can change the way you think about on demand capacity.
New integrated clear-key encryption security features on z10 EC include support for a higher advanced encryption standard and more secure hashing algorithms. Performing these functions in hardware is designed to contribute to improved performance.

Integrated on the z10 EC processor unit is a Hardware Decimal Floating Point unit to accelerate decimal floating point transactions. This function is designed to markedly improve performance for decimal floating point operations which offer increased precision compared to binary floating point operations. This is expected to be particularly useful for the calculations involved in many financial transactions.

New innovations on the z10 EC are designed to give needed capacity and memory along with the just-in-time management of resources. Advanced virtualization technologies aid in server consolidation, satisfying high I/O requests and dynamic provisioning of new servers.

blog.muraleedharan.com

2008-04-28T19:04:00.001+05:30

"blog.muraleedharan.com" is an attempt to analyse and chronicle my experiences and look to the future on three counts - career, pleasure and life in general. Thats about everything under the sun - isn't it? As the days pass, I feel, still there is something more to know about myself. Every next day I realize something totally new about my nature, whether it be positive or negative! Life ends somewhere, sometimes; but our question "Who and what we really are?" remains unanswered. Is it not true?