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zAAP and zIIP Revisited (At Last)
It's been an awfully long time since I wrote When Good Work Doesn't Go To zIIP / zAAP Heaven . And too long since I posted anything at all. In fact I had a bunch of posts in my brain until this morning when a customer asked me a question which turned into this blog post. (Those posts are still in my brain and will probably see the light of day eventually, including one based on a customer... [More]
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When Display Commands Aren't Good Enough
There've been times in the past when a request for extra data in SMF has been met by "you can issue a DISPLAY command to get that".
(Another variant is "you can go to the HMC for that".) I'm here to tell you why I don't think that's a brilliant answer: Such a command is a point-in-time thing.
Systems nowadays are much more dynamic than they were. Something as simple as... [More]
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My HackDay 6 Project - Mashing Up RMF
Another 6 months on and another HackDay... Hackday6 was on 24 October - and being distracted by little things such as GSE Conference and an important customer situation I haven't blogged about it yet. So, a little late, here goes... Many of you will know that RMF has a WebPortal for monitoring performance and capacity usage. And you'll know that the z10 processor's HMC is web-based (though I don't... [More]
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DB2 Data Sharing and XCF Job Name - Revisited
It's been almost four years since I wrote DB2 Data Sharing and XCF Job Name .
It mostly stands the test of time but there are a couple of things I want to bring up. I was in the DB2 Development lab a couple of days ago, talking with a couple of developer friends about DB2 Data Sharing and XCF.
They know DB2 Data Sharing and IRLM much better than I do but XCF not so much.
(It's probable that XCF... [More]
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Would You Like More WLM Information In DB2 Accounting Trace - And How Would You Use It?
I was lucky enough to be in Silicon Valley Lab for DB2 BootCamp last week. There I ran into a DB2 developer I've worked very successfully with in the past - John Tobler. (He's the guy I look to for questions and issues with DB2 SMF data.) We had a good discussion about something I'd personally like to see in DB2 Accounting Trace - more WLM information - and this post is as a result of this... [More]
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zAAP and zIIP Delay
I was going to start this post with an apology. But, as any sensible blogger would, I left it a few days to write this. Now I realise that there's a wider point than the "I was wrong" one. (But I was wrong - in a way that I think many other people might've been wrong too.) So let me talk about two things in this post: zAAP and zIIP Delay. How I came to be wrong and what we can all... [More]
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Minor Good News On Coupling Facility Performance Reporting
In recent releases RMF have put the machine serial number into both SMF Type 74 Subtype 4 (Coupling Facility Activity) and SMF Type 70 Subtype 1 (CPU Activity). Actually we get two fields in each case: Plant Number and Sequence Number, which you can put together as eg "51-12345". Soon we'll get another piece of the jigsaw: Partition Number in 74-4. This is a small change but a nice useful one...... [More]
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z/OS R.9 RMF Parallel Sysplex New Fields
I've just re-read the XCF (74-2) and CF (74-4) sections of the z/OS Release 9 SMF Manual. There are some nice things in there... XCF (74-2) Number of buffer 1KB blocks by path (R742PUSE). This should tell you whether memory waste by over-specifying CLASSLEN is a problem. And some of the other scenarios. Member job name (R742MJOB). I'd like to believe this would tell us which IRLM a given member... [More]
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WLM Response Time Distribution Reporting With RMF
If you’re running a workload with WLM Percentile Response Time goals
take a look at the RMF Service Class Period Response Time Goal Attainment instrumentation.
It’s in the Workload Activity Report but this post is about using the raw data to tell the
story better than a single snapshot (or long-term “munging”) can. (An example of a percentile response time goal is “90% of transactions must end... [More]
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Hackday 9 - REXX, Java and XML
I've written about Hackday in the past. See My HackDay 6 Project - Mashing Up RMF , My HackDay 5 Project - z/OS System Logger Analysis and Hackday4 and Referer URLs (though I don't know why I didn't write about Hackday 7 or Hackday 8). So, this year I participated in Hackday 9 (last Friday). My entry follows on from this recent blog post: BPXWUNIX - z/OS' Best Kept Secret? . Graham Harris, in... [More]
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DB2 Data Sharing and XCF Job Name
Back in z/OS R.9 RMF Parallel Sysplex New Fields (in 2007) I mentioned a new field: R742MJOB (XCF Member Job Name.) At the time I had no real customer data so I could only espouse the HOPE that this field would be useful. (When I asked for it to be added to the SMF 74 Subtype 2 record it seemed to me it probably would be.) Now that z/OS R.9 is "mainstream" I'm seeing lots of data at this level.... [More]
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System z10 CPU Instrumentation
Since I got back off vacation in L'Hérault in late August I've been working on adding z10 support to our CPU analysis code. It's quite a substantial set of changes - and I don't think I'm finished yet . But I'd like to share with you what I've learned so far. But first let's briefly review what's changed with z10. (This is a very brief review and not a tutorial on the subjects mentioned.)... [More]
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ERBSCAN / ERBSHOW - More Good News
I mentioned ERBSCAN and ERBSHOW in this post from January . This is a handy pair of tools for displaying SMF records - most notably the ones produced by RMF. For the uninitiated you type ERBSCAN in ISPF 3.4 against an SMF data set and it pops up a list of SMF records. Typing ERBSHOW followed by the record number formats the record - especially well if it's one that RMF produced. And the prior post... [More]
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Self-Documenting Systems (Actually Coupling Facilities) - One Year On
About a year ago I posted: A Small Step For RMF, A Giant Leap For Self-Documenting Systems . A year on I've encountered some customer data that's made me go "huh?", related to this. In the referenced post I mentioned R744FLPN, the Coupling Facility's LPAR Number. For the first time I've seen data where the match - with SMF 70 Logical Partition Number (in Logical Partition Section) -... [More]
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He Picks On CICS
If you think this title is obscure bear in mind the original working title was "Send In The Hobgoblins". 1 When I started to write - actually before the "mind mapping" stage - it was going to be all about inconsistency in the way bits of systems are named. You'll see some of that reflected in the finished article (pun intended) but the post has mostly gone in a different... [More]
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zAAP CPU Time Bug in Type 72 Record - OA29974 Is The Cure
If you use RMF Postprocessor you won't see this one. If you use Service Units rather than CPU seconds fields in the SMF 72-3 record you also won't see it. It's only if (like me) you use the CPU time for zAAPs in your CPU Utilisation calculation that you'll run into this problem.
If you examine fields R723IFAT (zAAP CPU Time) and R723IFCT (zAAP on GCP CPU Time) you might find them zero when you... [More]
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Coupling Facility Topology Information - A Continuing Journey
9 months on from
this post and I finally get some time to enhance my Coupling Facility reporting. If you recall I mentioned
OA37826 , which provides new SMF 74 Subtype 4 data and fields in the RMF Coupling Facility Activity report - in support of enhancements in CFLEVEL 18. [1] I also mentioned that my 74–4 code needed reworking to properly support the Remote Coupling Facility Section... [More]
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Data Collection Requirements
Over the years I’ve written emails with data collection requirements dozens of times, with varying degrees of clarity. It would be better, wouldn’t it, to write it once. I don’t think I can get out of the business of writing such emails entirely but here’s a goodly chunk of it. Another thing that struck me is that the value of some types of data has increased enormously... [More]
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Discovering Report Class / Service Class Correspondences
It’s possible I’ve written something about this before:
My blog is so extensive now it’s hard to find out exactly what I’ve written about (and I’m going to have to do something about that). I say “written something ” because I know for sure I haven’t written about the SMF record field I want to introduce you to now. Previously If when you send me... [More]
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Are You Being Served?
As you will’ve seen in
WLM Response Time Distribution Reporting With RMF I’ve been thinking about WLM Response Time goals quite a bit recently.
And this post continues the train of thought. It’s very easy to think of WLM Service Classes as being self contained.
For many that’s true - and only their own performance numbers need to be considered for us to understand their... [More]
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zIIP Eligibility When You Don't Have A zIIP
A couple of things have happened recently that lead me to post about projecting the amount of CPU that's zIIP eligible.
(Everything in this post applies equally to zAAPs, of course.) When we first introduced z/OS specialty engines we introduced the "Project CPU" mechanism, reporting most notably via RMF.
(I emphasise "z/OS" because ICF and IFL engines, which don't run z/OS, don't have such a... [More]
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System zEC12 CFLEVEL 18 RMF Instrumentation Improvements
I don't know how many of you will've spotted this but there was a nice instrumentation enhancement in the recent System zEC12 announcement. It comes with the RMF support for CFLEVEL 18 ( OA37826 and provides much more detail on paths to Coupling Facilities (CFs). Previously RMF reported channel path acronyms - one per path. And that was all. (A channel path acronym is something like... [More]
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New Blog Banner - In Honour Of The New zEnterprise EC12 (zEC12)
I hope you like my new blog banner - in honour of the new zEnterprise EC12. We actually announced the zEC12 (for short) the day I returned from vacation. Great planning, IBM! It's taken me a while to catch up - and changing the banner was an important step. I've known about the soon-to-be-announced processor range for quite some time, as I think you'd expect. And tracked what was going to be... [More]
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zIIP / zAAP Capacity Planning
I'm not a capacity planner but I play one on TV 1 sometimes. A customer asked me about the subject of zAAP Capacity Planning so I thought I'd post a few thoughts here. (Almost everything I say here is equally true of a zIIP.) The main point is I don't think it terribly different from regular CPU Capacity Planning. But there are some quirks: While we do have queuing we also have Crossover. But at... [More]
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Another Way Of Looking At CICS Monitor Trace Data
The CICS Monitor Trace SMF Record (Type 110) has got to be one of the most complicated SMF records in existence - and for good reason. Which is precisely why I'm not going to attempt to process the raw records in my code. (And why PMCICS doesn't support releases after a certain point.) But the "and for good reason" hints at the fact I think this is a tremendously valuable type of... [More]
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Drawing The Line
You'd think it would be pretty simple to draw a line. Right? This post discusses an enhancement I'd like to make to my current reporting - and I'm pretty sure that technically I can do it. The question is whether I should . Consider my current "Memory by address space within Service Class" graph. Here's a sample: And here's what I think I might like it to look like: Obviously the line's... [More]
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A Small Step For RMF, A Giant Leap For Self-Documenting Systems
I mentioned APAR OA21140 before - here . It's quite an old APAR and so it will (in all likelihood) be on your systems. I'd like to draw your attention to a subtle 1-byte field in the SMF 74 Subtype 4 (Coupling Facility Activity) record: R744FLPN. It's the partition number for the coupling facility. (If you've seen any one of several of my presentations I'll've talked about this field.) Here's... [More]
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"Channel Z's All Static All Day Forever" - IRD and Hiperdispatch
I've been looking for an excuse to reference the excellent B52's Channel Z ever since we started talking about "z". And this is, I think, a good one. (Notice BTW the URL in the previous paragraph makes it clear SING365.com (should be "SING360" ) is using Domino.) So, back to the matter at hand... A customer I'm working with is using Intelligent Resource Director (IRD)... [More]
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Batch Capacity Planning, Part 2 - Memory
I can't believe it's been almost a week since I wrote Batch Capacity Planning, Part 1 - CPU . Where did the time go? Re-reading it I'm struck by the overwhelming theme of Batch's unpredictability and lumpiness. This is true of memory, as well, but to a much lesser degree. Why to a lesser degree? Well, in most systems I look at the memory usage is mostly fairly constant and dominated by big... [More]
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Batch Capacity Planning, Part 1 - CPU
It's been a week since the following was posted in IBM-MAIN: Batch Capacity Planning - BWATOOL? So far there's been no reply. Though a little disappointed, I'm not surprised. "Disappointed" as I was looking for a good debate (even though it wasn't me who asked the question). "Not surprised" as I think the subject of Batch Capacity Planning is a tough one. The original post... [More]
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