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1.  Cheryl Watson's TUNING Letter 2004, No 1

The fifty-page 2004, No. 1 TUNING Letter was emailed to electronic subscribers today.  The print issues will be mailed next week.  You can purchase a printed copy of the current TUNING Letter for $95 at http://www.watsonwalker.com.  The following "Management Summary" contains a summary of just some of the contents of this latest TUNING Letter.

z/OS 1.5 and z/OS 1.4
A large part of this TUNING Letter addresses some new facilities that became available with z/OS 1.5 and are also partially available as an option for z/OS 1.4 users.  These new facilities became available March 26, 2004, and are designed to improve your life.  The major enhancement is console restructuring.  This facility reduces many of the problems caused by console backlogs and buffer shortages.  Another enhancement reduced storage constraints by moving the CMBs (Channel Measurement Blocks) above the line (to become ECMBs).  Another major change was to significantly enhance Multilevel Security.  But some changes may be required from both you and your ISVs in order to take advantage of these new features.  You'll find articles on the new features in our News section (page 10), Console Restructure Update (page 16), Multilevel Security (page 23), our SHARE Trip Report (page 28) and our What's New? section (page 37).  The What's New? section also describes some DFSMS enhancements.

z/OS 1.6
We've included a few notes about z/OS 1.6 on page 35, but want to stress that this release, which will be available in September 2004, can run only on zSeries machines (z800, z900 and z990).  G5, G6 and Multiprise systems will not be able to run z/OS 1.6.  Also please note that WebSphere V4 will not be able to run on z/OS 1.6.  You must upgrade to WebSphere V5 before that migration.

Elsewhere in This Issue
In our News section on page 4, we include an important Red Alert for DFSMS (we consider losing VSAM data to be important!) and dozens of APARs (most of which are HIPER) that should be of interest to any installation.  Among the important WSC Flashes is one providing APARs to enable System-Managed Coupling Facility Structure Duplexing.  Be sure that you're current with maintenance before even thinking about this!

As usual, we presented some audience survey questions during our Cheryl's Hot Flashes session at SHARE (see page 26).  We think you'll find the results of these interesting.  For example, out of approximately 250 attendees, about two-thirds of them used (or plan to use) IBM's bimodal offering when moving to z/Architecture (64-bit).  Of the people who have used bimodal to migrate, at least 15 sites had to fall back because of some type of problem during the migration.  About 80% of the attendees will be migrating to z/OS 1.4 for their next migration, while the rest are heading to z/OS 1.5 or higher.  Only one site indicated that they had activated IRD CPU Management.  Only five sites indicated they were using variable WLC license charges.  And, surprisingly, only eight sites had installed the latest (free) ICKDSF Release 17 utility program.  This new release is needed on any image that shares DASD with a z990.  The older release 16 is over ten years old.  What are you waiting for? 

Stay tuned!

Cheryl Watson

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