TCP/IP is the core of communication for z/OS® mainframes, both for traffic in and out of the mainframe and internally among z/OS images and processor complexes. Proactively manage security risks and failures before they impact users.
What's included
IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision enhances analysis by translating over 600 raw codes from zERT records into readable text for cipher suite, encryption algorithms and message authentication types.
Get insight into physical interfaces, including OSA channels and HiperSockets that are used for communication between LPARs. While the increased usage in this example isn’t a problem for availability (green), the change observed may need further investigation and may be related to unnecessary increases elsewhere in the infrastructure.
Duplicate ACKs may indicate data center or external network configuration improvement opportunities. This is one of many metrics that are automatically rated and tracked to provide quick insights into mainframe network health.
Seemingly unrelated metrics can be assembled and shared in one view for performance, network, storage, MQ, CICS, and Db2, enabling collaboration. This example incorporates type 30 address space consumption, TCP/IP traffic rates and traffic by encryption cipher type. Visibility into client and server IP address is also available.
Top-level views (by sysplex or by traffic class) give immediate visibility into the amount of network traffic that uses each protocol and identify traffic that is not cryptographically protected. You can drill down by many criteria to focus your analysis and determine the source or target of the traffic.
Navigate easily to your chosen subset of network traffic (for example, by traffic class or IP address), and get visibility into data specific to the selected protocol. This example includes the encryption algorithms that are being used, cryptographic key lengths, and other attributes of the cryptographic protection.
Since the CPU required for encryption can be significant and can vary widely between various encryption types, visibility into the CPU is vital. Before and after analysis of implementation changes enables correlation between the encryption and the business cost (in terms of CPU).
In contrast to approaches requiring coding programs or mastering tools that are siloed by technology to access various types of SMF data, this intuitive user interface eliminates data mining efforts and frees staff to focus on high-value analysis. It also boosts learning, promotes collaboration and enhances analytical effectiveness.
Context-sensitive drill downs help you identify alternative analytical paths based on the data that is displayed and to investigate each hypothesis with a few clicks, reducing time lost on exploring “dead-end” paths. The ability to focus analysis on the wanted data subset is valuable when dealing with massive SMF data volumes.
Highly flexible drill-down capabilities of IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision enable data to be viewed at the processor, system, card or address space level and specific migration activity. Built-in conditional filters can be customized for a set of reports on a focused dashboard.
Advantages to adopting a cloud model include rapid implementation (no lead time to install and set up the product locally), minimal setup (only for transmitting SMF data), offloading staff resources and access to IntelliMagic consulting services to supplement local skills.