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Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 6 "Expect The Unexpected"
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 went “why not?” and so this episode was born. It is of course largely built around this blog post but we had a couple of other things we... [More]
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What Do I Know?
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 anybody to tell you anything. A bit pessimistic, perhaps a little... [More]
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Engineering
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? OK, here we go: Generally our [2] code doesn’t report down to the single engine... [More]
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Born With A Measuring Spoon In Its Mouth
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, as you can imagine. Now, I was only on the periphery of the discussions and they carried on... [More]
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Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 4 "The Road To Munich"
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 series is here . Episode 4 is here . Episode 4 “The Road To Munich” Show Notes Here are the show notes... [More]
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Shared Coupling Facility CPU And DYNDISP
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 systems often aren’t instrumented. This post is about Coupling Facility (CF) image... [More]
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Refactoring ISPF File Tailoring And DFSORT
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 the “Principle” Of Sufficient Disgust kicked in.
So... [More]
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iThoughts The Legend
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 an outline: You’ll see some of the nodes are filled (arguably)... [More]
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More Fun With DDF
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 giving it to European customers in Munich in mid June. I’m also giving it as an... [More]
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Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 3 "Getting Better"
You probably wonder why I post to my blog echoing our podcast episodes. There are two reasons: Yes, it alerts more people to our podcast series. Well duh. It gives me a chance to inject something more personal about the episode. So in the latter spirit I’d say the highlight for me of making Episode 3 was getting the “three part disharmony” working. Glenn Wilcock very kindly... [More]
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DB2 DDF Transaction Rates Without Tears
Some of my blog posts revolve around a single SMF field, or maybe a couple. This post is one of those. If I look at my customers’ mainframe estates [1] , especially the DB2 portion of them, they’re getting more complex by the year. In particular, quite a few customers are in the “tens of DB2 subsystems” category. One of the things driving the number up are SAP... [More]
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Java Markdown Processing On z/OS
In
Episode 1 of MPT Podcast we discussed Markdown and Marna asked me if it could be run on z/OS.
My answer was “you could try a Python Markdown processor via Jython ”. [1] Then, on IBM-MAIN, Dave Griffiths suggested using one of the Java Markdown processors, instead of Jython. So I got to experimenting: I downloaded Java Markdown to my Linux machine. It’s a jar file. I wrote a... [More]
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Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 2 "Sound Affects"
I think we were much more relaxed when we put this episode together, and I hope it shows. We’re learning our craft, and I think quite fast. Below are the show notes. The series is here . Episode 2 is here . Episode 2 “Sound Affects” Show Notes Here are the show notes for Episode 2 “Sound Affects”. Follow Up We had some follow up items: Marna talked about the new SDSF... [More]
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Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 1 "A Luta Continua" ("The Struggle Continues")
We enjoyed recording Episode 0, learning as we went. And people seem to have enjoyed it. So we recorded another one. So here are the show notes for Episode 1. By the way we publish the show notes with the audio. You can get the series (and it is a series now) from here , and Episode 1 from here . And rest assured we have plenty of plans for the future. Episode 1 “A Luta... [More]
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Mainframe Performance Topics Podcast Episode 0 "Sic Parvis Magna" ("Greatness From Small Beginnings")
I’m delighted Marna Walle and I are collaborating on a podcast series. We’re calling it “Mainframe, Performance, Topics Podcast”. You can guess where we got the name from. Below are the show notes. The series is here . Episode 0 is here . Episode 0 “Sic Parvis Magna” ( “Greatness From Small Beginnings" ) Show Notes Here are the show notes for Episode... [More]
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