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1. Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter 2006 No. 2
2. The New IBM z9 Processors
3. Important SRM APAR
4. Annual UKCMG Meeting
5. New Red Alert Regarding Time Changes
6. BPXBATCH Enhancements

1.  Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter 2006 No. 2

The forty-nine page 2006 No. 2 TUNING Letter was emailed to subscribers on April 27, 2006.  Single issues may be obtained for $135 each from our Web site at http://www.watsonwalker.com.  The following is a summary of just some of the contents of this latest TUNING Letter:

z/OS 1.7 Migration and SHARE Trip Report
The SHARE user conference was held in Seattle since our previous issue, and we share some of the details in our trip report starting on page 28.  Many of the sessions addressed migration to z/OS 1.7, and they are included in our Focus article on page 15.  We also pass along some important maintenance that will help you avoid performance or availability problems.  This is just a fraction of what we learned during the conference, and we'll pass along other gems in future issues.  One of the system programmers at SHARE made the comment that he had finally convinced his manager to attend this meeting, and the manager was surprised at the intensity of the week, and the large volume of good information.  If you are like this manager and think that all user conferences are boondoggles, please accept our challenge to attend the next meeting and see for yourself.

Competition in the Mainframe Arena
One of the most exciting pieces of news in this issue is the emergence of a new z/OS hardware vendor that will be competing with IBM.  Our introduction to Platform Solutions, Inc. (PSI) can be found on page 44.  Although it would be difficult for any new company to compete with IBM in hardware, PSI has some pretty impressive people (such as Dr. Gene Amdahl) providing the knowledge and the dollars.  Even though most of us owe our careers and livelihood to what IBM has started, we have always thought that a little competition makes for a more exciting marketplace.  We will be sure to watch this new company closely, and we will make sure to pass along any information about future developments.

Hot Flashes
In addition to this publication, one of the ways we like to pass along information is via the sessions that we present at SHARE.  One of the most popular sessions is Cheryl's Hot Flashes session, which is presented on the last day of the conference.  Cheryl gives useful tips, tuning advice, warnings about potential problems, and other things that are of interest.  Starting on page 31 you will find an expanded version of this information presented at the last conference.  Some of the material has been updated due to changes since the meeting, and most of it has also been enhanced to include more details than can be presented in a one-hour session.  One of the more important topics is that relating to service units.  Due to recent discoveries, we show that if you are using service units for performance and capacity planning for small LPARs, you could be off by as much as 30%.

User Experiences
Our readers are the source of much good advice, as they share with us some of their experiences, both good and bad.  You will find many of these stories in this issue, starting on page 37.  •  There is a potential problem that can make your COBOL programs start behaving differently after maintenance is installed (see page 37).  Because this is such a subtle problem, it can cost your organization a lot of time and money if you don't prevent it.  •  A user also passes along some performance advice related to Version 8 of the DB2 product (see page 40).  •  We conducted a recent survey about how organizations charge for SRB time, and we give you the results (see page 42).  •  We also mention the names of two additional products that do tape encryption (see page 43).

2.  The New IBM z9 Processors

There has been much speculation that IBM would introduce a new smaller version of its System z9-109 this year, much like it introduced the smaller z890 after the z990.  That speculation proved correct when IBM announced a new class of processors on April 27, 2006.

The name of the new processor is the System z9 Business Class (or z9 BC) processor.  There are two models that support up to 73 different capacity settings, ranging from 27 MIPS to 1890 MIPS.  Capacity may be adjusted by altering the number of processors and the speed of the processors.  There are many different upgrade paths available, so that customers can select a capacity that matches their needs, and upgrade that capacity as workloads increase.

The smallest model will have a price of approximately $100,000 (US) and will deliver about 27 MIPS, the same as the smallest z890.  All models will support all the current specialty processors, including the Internal Coupling Facility (ICF), the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL), the zSeries Application Assist Processor (zAAP), and the new System z9 Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) designed to offload certain types of database work.  Another piece of good news is that the cost of these specialty engines for the z9 BC will be $95,000, a reduction from the $125,000 cost that applies when you install them on a z9-109.

There were also changes announced for the current System z9-109 processor.  First of all, the name has changed.  The new name for this big brother of the z9 BC will be the System z9 Enterprise Class (or z9 EC) processor.  This model will now offer 24 additional sub-capacity settings within the first eight general purpose processors.  Using the entry-level setting will provide a capacity that is approximately one third the capacity of what was previously the smallest model (the 701).  This will allow smaller organizations to justify a z9 EC and then grow into it as their workloads increase.

May 26th was announced as the general availability date for the new processors and the new zIIP specialty engine.  You can read the IBM press release announcing these new products at http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19577.wss.  You can find more detailed information by visiting the IBM news Web site (http://www.ibm.com/news) and searching for announcement letter #106-287.

We will be giving you more detailed information in future TUNING Letters, and we will soon be publishing an updated CPU chart.  But we wanted to start getting the word out so that you can evaluate these new offerings in terms of your organization.

3.  Important SRM APAR

We were recently alerted to an important APAR that applies to those running z/OS 1.6 and later with zAAP processors.

In the SMF type 30 record, field SMF30CPT may contain a value that is too large.  This is because of an accumulated value that is never being reset.  Please refer to APAR OA15712 (SMF30CPT Invalid Value Due To Invalid Enclave CPU Time) for more details.  This APAR is still in OPEN status, but should be watched if you are using zAAP processors and SMF type 30 records for accounting.

Thanks to Jerry Urbaniak and his colleagues at Acxiom for passing along this one.

4.  Annual UKCMG Meeting

If you plan to be in the United Kingdom during the end of June, you might consider attending the annual conference of the UKCMG.  Cheryl was invited to speak this year, but could not accept because of a conflict.  Here is an announcement of the meeting, taken from a recent email we received:
 

UKCMG Annual Conference & Exhibition 
26 – 28 June 2006
The Chesford Grange Hotel, Warwick, UK

This year’s Annual Conference will be special – we are coming of age! 

Yes, at the 2006 Annual Conference we will be celebrating 21 years in which we have become an established independent user group association of Information Technology professionals.  In those 21 years our end-user membership has grown across financial institutions, utilities, government departments, telecommunications concerns and retailers, as well as embracing hardware and software vendors.  Today we are supported by CMG organisations in Europe, the United States of America, and Australia.  

The year’s comprehensive and relevant agenda covers Mainframe, Service Management, Distributed, Web, Performance Engineering, End-to-End Measurement and general IT topics, and for more information please connect to the following link www.ukcmg.org.uk.

  
Several well-known US speakers will be on hand to provide their own support to UKCMG: Dr. Jeff Buzen, Don Deese, Dr. Bernie Domanski, Peter Enrico, Mark Friedman, Ivan Gelb, Dr. Barry Merrill, and Dr. Annie Shum.

That sounds like great fun, and we wish that we could be there.  Congratulations to UKCMG for more than two decades of service to its members! 

5.  New Red Alert Regarding Time Changes

On March 31, 2006, IBM issued a new Red Alert with the title "Daylight saving time offset change."  This document describes an issue where one or more logical partitions (LPARs) did not detect and add the Daylight Savings Time (DST) offset to the local time in some situations.  The problem is still being evaluated by IBM.

As we noted in our latest issue (see page 8), this same information can be found in Flash 10462 issued by the Washington Systems Center.

You can browse Red Alerts at http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/support/zseries/.  From the main page, click on the link "Red Alerts for System z."  Or go directly to https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/redAlerts/20060331.html.  You can also subscribe to a service that will send you emails related to Red Alert activity.  We feel that at least one person from every organization should be subscribed to this important service.

6.  BPXBATCH Enhancements

In our latest issue, we describe some welcome and long-overdue enhancements to the BPXBATCH utility program used by z/OS UNIX users (see pages 4-5).  These enhancements will be part of z/OS 1.8, and are also being rolled back to z/OS 1.7 with APAR OA11699 (New Function - BPXBATCH).  Unfortunately, when you research this APAR, you will find that there are some problems with it.  You should also install OA14891 (ABEND013 RSN20 BPXBATCH STDOUT SYSOUT STDPARM BPXMBATC OA11699 BPXM079I DCB), which corrects three different problems that were found during the testing of OA11699.  But at least one user reported a S0C4 ABEND after applying OA14891, so that fix is marked in error, and new APAR OA15800 (BPXBATCH ABEND0C4 IEFQBSVA BPXP018I When PTF for OA14891 Applied 06/03/28 PTF PECHANGE) has been opened to address that issue.  That APAR is still in OPEN status, so a fix is not currently available. 

Thanks to Jerry Urbaniak at Acxiom for passing along the results of his research.  It appears that those waiting for an improved BPXBATCH will need to be patient for a little longer.

Stay tuned!

Cheryl Watson
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