Martin Packer

Drawers, Of Course

This post is about processor drawers and how the topic might influence your LPAR design. Introduction Once upon a time drawers and books were very simple. If you wanted a certain number of processors – whether GCP, zIIP, zAAP, IFL, or ICF – that determined the number of drawers you had. (I’m still hearing peopleContinue reading “Drawers, Of Course”

Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 34 “Homeward Bound”

We started planning this one quite a while ago. Thankfully our topics tend to be evergreen – in that they’re still topical for quite a while. In that vein I know we are gaining new listeners and they aren’t all starting with the latest episode. Anyway, our schedules have been their usual hectic selves –Continue reading “Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 34 “Homeward Bound””

Reduced To A Single Tap

(This is not a post about plumbing.) 😀 It’s been a while since I last wrote about personal automation. And in Stickiness I talked about what makes automations stick for me. This post is about experiments with RFID detection and automation. These actually turned into something I use daily when I’m at home. Hobbyist DigitalContinue reading “Reduced To A Single Tap”

Bursty Batch – Small Reprise

In Bursty Batch I talked about how some customers have large amounts of batch work coming in all at once, and how a new WLM function in z/OS 3.1 might be handy in catering for it. And it subsequently occurred to me there is a cheap-to-collect and therefore almost universal method of assessing how burstyContinue reading “Bursty Batch – Small Reprise”

In My Estimation

This post is about Coupling Facility sizing – particularly when you don’t have one to start with. And particularly CPU. (Memory is reasonably catered for with CFSizer – whether over the web or now in z/OSMF for z/OS 3.1.) And the reason I’m writing about this is because I was recently asked to help sizeContinue reading “In My Estimation”

Bursty Batch

Bursty batch is quite common. For example, a customer I’m dealing with right now kicks off a burst of batch at 7PM and another burst at 10PM. I doubt that customer is reading this blog post. Another customer has a burst of batch kicking off at 2AM. They probably will read this post. But theirContinue reading “Bursty Batch”

Tips For Debugging A DFSORT E15 Exit

I suppose I’d better tell you what an E15 exit is – else you might not read the rest of the post. 😀 DFSORT (and its competitor) allow you to send records to an exit routine. This happens as the very first thing for processing an individual record. This routine is called an “E15 routine”.Continue reading “Tips For Debugging A DFSORT E15 Exit”

z16 ICA-SR Structure Service Times

It was recently brought to my attention that CFLEVEL 25, made available with IBM z16, improved ICA-SR links. (I don’t know why I didn’t spot this before – but it’s documented in several places, including IBM Db2 13 for z/OS Performance Topics, an interesting Redbook. (I actually read this from cover to cover during aContinue reading “z16 ICA-SR Structure Service Times”

Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 33 “These Boots Were Made”

I hope you can tell that Marna and I had a lot of fun making this episode. I can’t recall which of us came up with the cultural reference. But it sort of developed – until the aftershow was sort of inevitable. Anyhow here are the show notes for Episode 33. The podcast series isContinue reading “Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 33 “These Boots Were Made””

Reporting For Duty?

I’m writing this on a flight to Munich, where I’m presenting Parallel Sysplex Resiliency at a customer conference. By the way I wonder what happened to the word “resilience” and what the difference is between that and “resiliency”. But, it’s a trip to a nice city and I expect to run into lots of friendsContinue reading “Reporting For Duty?”