Author Archives: Martin Packer

(Originally posted 2016-08-11.) (Reposted without change as I accidentally deleted it while getting rid of a SPAM comment.) Episode 5 had a different feel for me. It was our first “trip report” episode, and it felt much looser for that. In fact the sound effects between topics could’ve been elided but for now I’m stickingContinue reading “Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 5 “The Long Road Back From Munich””

(Originally posted 2016-07-11.) Episode 6 was a complete surprise to us! Marna had thought I was on vacation a week earlier than I was. To be fair, I expected to be with a customer in Australia that week. But then the workshop got pushed back and so this week came free [1] So we wentContinue reading “Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 6 “Expect The Unexpected””

(Originally posted 2016-07-02.) Or “The Man Who Knew Too Little”? This post is occasioned by a number of things coming together, the most recent of which is reviewing a very nice upcoming RedPaper. The gist is this: You’re responsible for managing Performance, Capacity and (to some extent) mainframe costs. But you can’t rely on anybodyContinue reading “What Do I Know?”

(Originally posted 2016-06-11.) Pardon the bad pun. Perhaps I should’ve written “Engine-ering” but where exactly do you put the dash?[1] There were hints on this topic in Born With A Measuring Spoon In Its Mouth but the real motivation came from a z196 customer without Hiperdispatch enabled. But what on earth am I on about?Continue reading “Engineering”

(Originally posted 2016-06-05.) SMT really was born with a measuring spoon in its mouth.[1] Let me rewind a few years… So, when SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) was being designed I was privileged to be on the periphery of discussions about how to instrument SMT. Things like CPU Utilisation get a little wierd in the SMT case,Continue reading “Born With A Measuring Spoon In Its Mouth”

(Originally posted 2016-06-04.) Episode 4 was, of course, our fifth podcast episode. 🙂 I had a lot of fun making the intro – with Audacity. I’m not sure if it’s “lost souls” or “tuning in”. It was meant to be the latter but the former is also good. Below are the show notes. The seriesContinue reading “Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 4 “The Road To Munich””

(Originally posted 2016-05-29.) You probably don’t have the same problem I do, namely not having access to SMF data from all the systems in your mainframe estate. You’ll recognise that as a provocative statement if ever there was one; For all sorts of reasons not every system’s RMF SMF is collected. Most notably, test systemsContinue reading “Shared Coupling Facility CPU And DYNDISP”

(Originally posted 2016-05-24.) On Twitter I joked ‘refactoring’ is ‘taking perfectly well working code and risking breaking it’. This post describes one such exercise. tl;dr: It was well worth it! In DFSORT Tables I wrote about a technique to create tables (or grids) using IFTHEN. It’s been a maintenance headache to the extent that theContinue reading “Refactoring ISPF File Tailoring And DFSORT”

(Originally posted 2016-05-19.) As I’ve indicated elsewhere we use iThoughts for outlining our podcast episodes (and use it to track completion). I’ve developed quite a nice technique for iThoughtsX (the macOS flavour), which I’ll share with you. This is in case you’re inclined to play with newer toys. 🙂 Consider the following fragment of anContinue reading “iThoughts The Legend”

(Originally posted 2016-05-16.) Already this year I’ve posted thrice on DDF: DB2 DDF Transaction Rates Without Tears DDF Batch DDF Counts It’s clearly something that’s important to me right now. 🙂 So this post is to mention I’m putting the finishing touches to a new presentation (the third of the year so far). I’m givingContinue reading “More Fun With DDF”