July 24, 2010
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- IBM zEnterprise System - This describes a new system that combines a new System z processor (z196), an optional BladeCenter Extension (zBX), and an IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager. Announcement 110-170.
- z196 - The newer, faster, bigger z10 with many additional features, this will be available September 10, 2010. Described in the same announcement.
- zBX - A BladeCenter Extension to connect with a z196 or z10. The first feature to use this is the IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer (ISAOPT) for DB2. This will be available November 19 for the z196, and December 17 for the z10. More cross-platform features are expected later. Announcement 110-177.
- IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer (ISAOPT) for DB2 - A new DB2 product that can route complex, CPU-intensive, queries from a System z to a BladeCenter to allow faster parallel processing. Can reduce some hour-long queries to seconds. Announcement 210-266.
- z/OS 1.12 - The next release of z/OS. We've had previews of this in our Tuning Letter, but will report more details after SHARE. Announcement 210-235.
- AWLC - Advanced WLC pricing that reduces the cost per MIPS for z196 stand-alone and all z196 parallel sysplexes. Announcement 210-238.
- IBM z/OS Management Facility (z/OSMF) V1.12. As we've mentioned before (see our Tuning Letter 2010, No. 2), this is a significant feature of z/OS that you should start using. This newest release provides a WLM policy editor (discussed in that Tuning Letter) and a new application called "Sysplex Status and Monitoring Desktops" that provides real-time resource status of servers, sysplexes, and Linux images. Announcement 210-220.
- z196 uni-processor speed improvements, up to 40% over a z10.
- 60% capacity increase over largest z10.
- Linux workloads gain up to 60% more performance at 35% lower price (to produce a virtual Linux server for under $1 per day). In addition, the floor space is reduced by up to 90% and energy consumption reduced by up to 80% compared to distributed servers.
- I think it's easiest to separate the z196 and the zBX/DB2 Smart Analytics for discussion purposes. Presently, only the large DB2 shops will be interested in the second half of this solution. And because it will not be available for several months, it will be easier if you take things a step at a time. Most installations will be interested in the z196 because of its lower cost per MIPS and the many new enhancements. At SHARE, IBM will present zEnterprise showing both components, but they are looking to the future. And the future looks great, although there are still a lot of questions to be answered.
- Be sure to look at the SHARE presentations on the z196 because there are 100 new instructions. The Principles of Operation manual hasn't been updated yet, but will be soon. Since some of the instructions are easy mnemonics, there may be some conflicts with user or vendor macros.
- The zBX solution for DB2 queries allows a z/OS DB2 query to partly run on IBM System x blades (which are not assigned MIPS or MSUs). You can almost think of this as similar to certain DB2 queries running on a zIIP processor. The difference, however, is that DB2 and SMF/RMF collect the CPU usage while on a zIIP. Because there is no metric to normalize the CPU usage on the zBX blades, I don't think we'll be able to tell much about the usage of the zBX. I'll be trying to track this down at SHARE. I see this problem as causing havoc with chargeback, repeatability, performance tuning, and capacity planning. I hope that IBM can address this issue before rolling out more applications that will be moving work across platforms. Vendors have already asked for this ability, but I think it will take some large customers to push IBM to find a solution.
- Whether you're going to SHARE or not, be sure to use their conference personal scheduling tool. This allows you to review all of the sessions and schedule which presentations to attend, or to read later. Even if your company is not a SHARE member, you'll be able to read the presentations for the next five or six months at no additional cost.
- For $490, your entire staff can watch the major presentations each day using web conferencing, as well as having access to all of the presentations. This is definitely one of the best educational purchases you can make. And you can even use your IBM education credits to pay for it. This is called "SHARE Online."
- Be sure to check out the several discounts available. There are discounts for first-time attendees, new people to mainframes, teachers, students, speakers or major volunteers, corporate-wide badges, and one-day attendees.
- If you're interested in the new hardware announcements, be there on Tuesday to see the sessions set aside before the actual announcement. At the moment, these are called "System z Update #1" through "System z Update #5" (sessions 7585, 7538, 7540, 7545, and 8141 respectively, with 8141 being given on Thursday). Fuller descriptions will be available at a later time.
- If you're interested in z/OS 1.12, you'll be very busy because all of the components have some significant changes in 1.12. But you can start with session 7402 (z/OS 1.12 New Facilities on Monday at 1:30pm) for an overview, then go to the more detailed sessions later.
- If you are fairly new to mainframes, be sure to go to some of the zNextGen sessions. This is an exciting project, just celebrating its 5-year anniversary, that provides valuable resources to those new in the field, or those moving to a new position that requires training. You don't need to be a SHARE member to join the group.
- If you're an experienced SHARE attendee, you may be surprised at the numbering scheme. The session numbers used to related to projects. So if I wanted to see which EWCP sessions were on, I would look at sessions that started with 25xx. That's no longer true, but you can still find all sessions from a project by doing a "Browse by Program & Project" at the top of the Personal Scheduler.
- When scheduling your air reservations, be sure to leave on Friday instead of Thursday. There are many important sessions on Thursday afternoon, such as my "Hot Flashes" at 4:30pm and the z/OS Ask the Experts Panel & MVS Pro-gram Closing at 6pm. Be sure that you can stay for it all.
- 1. About Cheryl Watson's Tuning
Letter 2010 No. 3
2. IBM's Big Announcement Day
3. Cheryl Watson's CPU Chart
4. SHARE in Boston
5. Correction to Tuning Letter 2010 No. 3
The thirty-five page 2010 No. 3 Tuning Letter was emailed to paid subscribers on June 14th. You may visit our Web site at www.watsonwalker.com to obtain subscription information. The following is our Management Summary page from that issue, talking about some of the contents of this latest Tuning Letter:
The Future
Two of the important topics in this
Tuning Letter are the preview of the next z/OS release (1.12) and the preview
of the next mainframe generation (might be called z11). The z/OS 1.12 preview
shows that IBM is continuing to simplify management and use of the mainframe.
The enhancements also provide enough performance improvements to justify
the migration effort to move to 1.12. One of the more important sections
in this article shows how to implement many of the 1.12 enhancements in
earlier re-leases with APARs. Why not get the benefits now?
And the z11 preview shows IBM's continued support and belief in the mainframe in their strategic positioning. The 30 to 60% increase in speed is pretty impressive. While details for these two new mainframe additions haven't been announced yet, we can tell that it will be a big year for IBM.
[Ed. Note - As you can see below, IBM did not name it a z11 - the new machine is called a z196.]
In the Meantime
Most of our readers are interested
in z/OS 1.11 because they've either just installed it or are planning to
do so soon. Because of that, we've brought together a wealth of information
on z/OS 1.11 user experiences and references that we expect will be invaluable.
Elsewhere in
this Issue
You'll find many other useful items
throughout this newsletter: zHPF • Improving SVC dump processing • DB2
parallelism explained • Telling which SVCs are in use • TIOT usage by job
• How to put your z/OS applications on smartphones • Many New Function
APARs (several that improve performance), APARs about invalid SMF data,
and a new section on Informational APARs.
2. IBM's Big Announcement Day
On July 22, IBM made several major
announcements. I think these are the most significant announcements in
the last several years. Here are the most important of the announcements:
- http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/news/announcement/20100722_annc.html
Be sure to click on all of the links and tabs, such as Resources.
3. Cheryl Watson's CPU Chart
As most of you know, our CPU Chart is based on IBM's Large Systems Performance Reference. A new set of LSPRs were released on Thursday, so you can expect to see a new CPU Chart as soon as we complete our analysis. In addition to creating the chart, we also analyze the impacts on each of the workloads and identify important changes or trends that arise. The CPU Chart and our analysis will be sent out to all Tuning Letter subscribers as soon as it's available.
On August 1-5, I'll be attending
the SHARE (www.share.org) conference
in Boston, and hope to see many of you there. This will be one of the most
important conferences in several years because we'll be getting more details
about the important announcements described in item #2 above. Here are
some of my recommendations.
We received the following note from
Marianne
Hammer who works in IBM's Performance Test team:
- One of my colleagues who works
on I/O performance, Jon Entwistle, pointed out that your latest
newsletter had a reference to zHPF performance on page 17 but the link
pointed to a paper on FCP instead. We have some interesting white papers
on the IBM System z I/O connectivity web site:
http://www.ibm.com/systems/z/hardware/connectivity/ficon_performance.html
- zHPF: IBM System z10 I/O
and High Performance FICON for System z Channel Performance
Ficon Express8: IBM System z10
FICON Express8 Channel Performance Version 1
The link and papers will help you understand the performance benefits of moving to zHPF (which are many).
Stay Tuned!
Cheryl Watson
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