Author Archives: Martin Packer

(Originally posted 2007-09-27.) I was asked an interesting question today by a customer – one with dozens of LPARs and therefore not much time to study each one in excruciating detail… “Given that System High UIC (hereafter referred to as ‘UIC’) behaves differently in z/OS R.8 how should I treat it?” I’ve posted on thisContinue reading “Memory Metrics Now That z/OS Release 8 Is Upon Us”

(Originally posted 2007-09-26.) Last week I was at the System z Tech Conference (again getting my zeds mixed up with my zees). 🙂 I presented 4 times, one of which was a repeat. What’s especially nice is that I got 87 attendees for the “Memory Matters in 2008” presentation – spread across 2 sessions. ThisContinue reading “System z Technical Conference, San Antonio TX”

(Originally posted 2007-07-13.) I previously mentioned the change in zNALC LPAR setup… You can (with APAR OA20314) now specify LICENCE=ZNALC. The SCRT co-requisite is Version 14.1.0. By the way, from when you submit your SCRT report at the beginning of August you have to use this new version (until a new one is mandated) inContinue reading “SCRT Version 14.1.0 is Announced”

(Originally posted 2007-07-12.) I’ve just created a wiki to discuss primarily SMF. Mainly from the management perspective, rather than the contents of each individual record. This follows on from things I’ve mentioned in this blog before. If you’d like to contribute to it (and it is DESPERATELY in need of contributions right now) get aContinue reading “z/OS Performance Instrumentation Management Techniques wiki”

(Originally posted 2007-07-05.) I presented a set of (someone else’s) foils on Web 2.0 to my team meeting last week. (Interestingly, being 6 months old they were already way out of date – what with Twitter and all.) Remember I’m in a mainframe crowd of effectively “gurus”. 🙂 So why should they be interested inContinue reading “Why Mainframe Folk Should Care About Web 2.0”

(Originally posted 2007-07-05.) It was a very good session, even if it was attended by just a “hard core” of mainframe sites. I think everyone said at least something and several said rather more than that. Here are some things I’d like to note from it… There was a general feeling that it’d be usefulContinue reading “Feedback from my UKCMG Mainframe Performance Instrumentation Birds Of A Feather”

(Originally posted 2007-06-23.) Here are my abstracts for the conference: Session B11: DB2 Data Sharing Performance for Beginners This presentation provides an introductory-level view of how to look at the DB2 Data Sharing performance numbersfrom both a z/OS / RMF and a DB2h perspective. Performance topics include: XCF, Coupling Facility, Data Sharing Structures, The application’sContinue reading “Abstracts for System z Technical Conference, San Antonio, September 17-21”

(Originally posted 2007-06-21.) This customer is using DB2 Hiperpools, despite being on a z9 BC processor and running DB2 Version 7. What I notice from DB2 Statistics trace is that most of the Hiperpool pages are not backed by memory. In other words they’ve ceased to exist. This despite there being plenty of memory inContinue reading “And Something Else That Confuses Me”

(Originally posted 2007-06-20.) … with a Performance Consultant? 🙂 Seriously, here’s something that made me go “hmm”… I started looking at the latest set of data from a customer… Their biggest-CPU WLM workload is called “BATCH” when they told me they were a CICS shop – and that CICS was their main CPU consumer duringContinue reading “It Doesn’t Take Much To Confuse Me”

(Originally posted 2007-06-13.) Regular readers would know I’m working on my “Memory Matters in 2008” presentation, which is a re-spin of the ’07 Version. One of the things I talk about is IMS. Thanks to my team mate Andy Wilkinson for this list of IMS Version 10 enhancements, all of which are virtual storage usageContinue reading “IMS Version 10 Memory Enhancements”