Performance Management considering the business perspective

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IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS 2024.7.0 includes a significant feature that provides options to manage performance consideration from the business perspective.

Performance management allows you to map business applications to infrastructure performance activity. You can now bind and manage specific performance activity to specific applications.

You can manage performance across your infrastructure by using IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS. However, questions always must be answered from perspectives that are native to the parts of the infrastructure that is managed. For example, in Db2 one can manage the environment based on Db2 data sharing groups, Db2 members, and AUTHID (among many other options). Typically, Db2 data sharing groups and Db2 members are running activity for many business entities. In addition, the complexity of multiple AUTHIDs outweighs any potential benefits of managing at this level, providing little to no understanding of business entities.

This new release of IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision allows grouping Db2 activity, CICS activity, Address Space activity, Job activity, Service Class Period activity, and Report Class activity into groups that match the business. The groups are customer-specific:

  1. One customer might have one perspective for the business such as Subject Area.
  2. Another customer might have two groups that help them represent the business. The Product Name & ID, Application Name & ID groups with each product name that contains multiple applications.
  3. Another customer might have four groups that help them represent the business such as Application Domain, Application, Solution Group, Software Group. For this customer, each Application Domain contains multiple applications. However, the Solution Groups and Software Groups represent other business units that are unrelated to the applications and the application domain.

Figure 1 shows an example of a dashboard that provides a view of the activity for jobs and address spaces per application domain.

Figure 1. Jobs and address spaces per application domain

Zoom the upper-left chart, Management Services is the biggest contributor to the time used for jobs and address spaces on this particular day.

Comparing this day to the previous business day, shows a different insight for the previous business day. Is it normal for your jobs and address spaces for your major application domains to be different between two adjacent business days?

#performance_management_considering_the_business_perspective__cics_activity shows an example of a dashboard that provides a view of the CICS activity per subject area. For this environment, the general-purpose processor (GCP, in red) is used more evenly for the subject areas. However, zIIP’s are not used as much for the subject areas. However, Credit insurance, does make good use of zIIP processors.

Figure 2. CICS activity per subject area

For Db2, use the parameters to create the business perspective:

  • QWHCAID. This is the Db2 authorization ID, also known as the DB2AUTHID.
  • QWHCCORRELATIONNAME. This is the Db2 correlation ID.
  • QWHCEUID. This is the end-user ID.
  • QWHCEUTX. This is the end-user transaction name.
  • QWHCEUWN. This is the end-user workstation.
  • QWHCOPID. This is the original operator ID.
  • QWHCTOKN. This is the accounting token.
  • QWHCTCXT. This is the trusted context name.

For CICS, use the parameters to create the business perspective:

  • CICSTRANSACTION. This is the CICS transaction.
  • PROGRAMNAME. This is the program name that is initially started when CICS initiates the transaction.
  • REPORTCLASS. This is the report class.

For jobs and address spaces, use the parameters to create the business perspective:

  • ACCOUNTING. This parameter assigns groups based on SMF30ACT.
  • JOBNAME. This parameter assigns groups based on SMF30JBN.
  • PROGRAMNAME. This parameter assigns groups based on SMF30PGM.
  • REPORTCLASS. This parameter assigns groups based on SMF30RCN.
  • SERVICECLASS. This parameter assigns groups based on SMF30SCN.
  • SYSTEM. This parameter assigns groups based on SMF30SID.
  • USERID. This parameter assigns groups based on SMF30RUD, which represents the RACF User ID.

For Service Class Periods, use the parameters to create the business perspective:

  • SERVICECLASS. This parameter assigns groups based on R723SCSN.
  • SYSTEM. This parameter assigns groups based on SMF72SID.

For Report Classes, use the parameters to create the business perspective:

  • SERVICECLASS. This parameter assigns groups based on R723SCSN.
  • REPORTCLASS. This parameter assigns groups based on R723MCNM.
  • SYSTEM. This parameter assigns groups based on SMF72SID.

See section 9.3.44, Defining the Applications, in the Reference Guide for all options available for defining the business groupings.