Whether you are currently using DB2 Version 8 or Version 9, getting ready for all the CPU efficiencies in DB2 10 is easy. Your company may not be thinking about migrating to DB2 10 yet, but DB2 10 is getting huge industry wide support as the cost savings began to be realized by management. Everyone wants to save money and with everyone trying to squeeze their budgets, a faster adoption of DB2 10 is in your future. It is best to be prepared, so here are a few things you can do  in DB2 Version 8 that will make it easier to get to DB2 10.

Embrace System Managed Storage SMS

No, I am not Darth Vader telling you to embrace the dark side, but to let you know that DB2 10 catalog and directory use SMS. Using SMS is a hard thing to do for many companies and personally, I am not a real big fan of SMS. DB2 10 and additional improvements in storage have made me think twice and SMS may be more help than a problem. Being a performance geek, I recommend limiting or not sharing storage volumes within the DB2 SMS definitions. The SMS performance key, if possible, is to segregate the DB2 SMS definitions completely, yes completely, away from other storage definitions. SMS horror stories about the I/O troubles are well known and through my consulting clients I see SMS at the center of many I/O problems. Embrace SMS but be diligent guarding your DB2 system’s I/O performance and especially your DB2 catalog and directory data sets.

Sharpen Your Security

I am a big supporter of compliance, protecting data assets, security audits and all the security team’s efforts for protecting the company and all the business information. DB2 10 offers more privileges and authority granularity in your DB2 systems and security experts will need to embrace these features to separate out your data access, utility operations and day-to-day work. Start auditing your security usage of your systems area, various DBA support groups, different local and distributed applications, and analyze their needs. Do the activities require data access? Could the DB2 DBA work maybe been done using a different security level such as DB2 SYSOPR or another security authority? More DB2 10 security privileges and authority granularity improvements are going to affect your security profiles. Get ready and start the security analysis now.

Learn more about DB2 10 through the replay of Roger Miller’s and my 2010 webcast: DB2 10 for z/OS – Helping you improve operational efficiencies and gain competitive advantage. The webcast replay is available here…

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/webcast/13apr/index.html?S_TACT=100GU00M&S_CMP=SP