CICS TS V5.1 performance report

CICS® TS for z/OS®, Version 5.1 introduces various technical and operational capabilities. Included in these updates are many improvements that provide performance benefits over previous CICS releases.

The CICS TS 5.1 performance report covers the following topics:

• Key performance benchmarks that are presented as a comparison with the CICS TS V4.2 release.
• An outline of improvements made regarding the threadsafe characteristics of the CICS run time.
• Details of the changes made to performance-critical CICS initialization parameters, and the effect of these updates.
• Description of all the updated monitoring fields, including examples where necessary.
• The extent and effect of the reduction in 24-bit and 31-bit virtual storage usage.
• High-level views of new functions that were introduced in CICS TS 5.1, including performance benchmark results where appropriate.
• A description of transaction isolation and how changes that were introduced in this release might affect workloads with this feature enabled.

For a definition of performance terms used in this report, see Performance terminology. A description of the test methodology that is used can be found in Testing with performance workloads. For a full description of the workloads used, see Workload descriptions.

Where reference is made to an LSPR processor equivalent, the indicated machine type and model can be found in the large systems performance reference (LSPR) document. For more information about obtaining and using LSPR data, see Large Systems Performance Reference.

Workload environment

When compiling the results for this report, the workloads were run on an IBM zEnterprise 196 model M80 (machine type 2817). A maximum of 16 dedicated central processors (CPs) were available on the measured logical partition (LPAR), with a maximum of four dedicated CPs available to the LPAR used to simulate users. These LPARs are configured as part of a IBM Parallel Sysplex. An internal coupling facility (CF) was co-located on the same central processor complex (CPC) as the measurement and driving LPARs, connected through internal coupling peer (ICP) links. An IBM System Storage DS8800 unit was used to provide external storage.

This report presents the results of several performance benchmarks when run in a CICS TS for z/OS, Version 5.1 environment. Unless otherwise stated in the results, the CICS TS 5.1 environment was the code that was available on the general availability date of 14 December 2012. Several of the performance benchmarks are presented in the context of a comparison with CICS TS V4.2. All LPARs used z/OS V1.13.