Proactive administration of your DB2 environment
IBM® Data Server Manager and Autonomics Director for DB2® consolidate features of the tools in the DB2 Utilities Solution Pack to provide a self-monitoring, self-diagnosing, and self-healing monitoring and maintenance system.
Overview
The DB2 Utilities Solution Pack is a comprehensive monitoring and administration solution that helps you to manage, optimize, control, and automate your DB2 environment. It is the cornerstone of an autonomics solution that helps you to anticipate and avoid emergency situations and high-severity problems before they occur. DB2 Utilities Solution Pack also helps you to maintain availability, integrity, and security, and comply with service level agreements. The ability to optimize performance is also an essential component of the solution.
In combination with Autonomics Director for DB2 and IBM Data Server Manager, the DB2 Utilities Solution Pack provides the precise level of automation and scheduled maintenance that your business requires to supplement manual approaches. Thanks to a robust set of configuration options based on policies and profiles, you are in complete control. You decide which actions to automate and which to perform manually.
The pack offers easy-to-configure policy services that build intelligence into utilities and tools management. In addition to the real-time statistics (RTS) that DB2 generates, including DB2 sensor data that any tool can access, Autonomics Director for DB2 adds an additional layer of features that enable you to define policies. These policies recommend or automate recurring DB2 monitoring and maintenance tasks, including the ability to schedule the collection and evaluation of the sensor data.
Autonomics Director for DB2 collects these point-in-time statistics about database health and stores them in a central repository. It evaluates the sensor data, and then compares the values to thresholds that you define in the policies. If DB2 activities exceed a threshold that you specify, Autonomics Director for DB2 generates an exception. You then have the option to define actions, such as triggering notifications or launching processes, that Autonomics Director for DB2 takes in response to the exceptions.
IBM Data Server Manager
IBM Data Server Manager modernizes mainframe administration by providing a single, intuitive, and modern web-based interface that configures, administers, automates, and optimizes the performance of your DB2 environment. It consolidates data from multiple DB2 tools, including tools from non-IBM vendors, and presents a more complete picture of those systems and databases. You can use the comprehensive context-sensitive help system included with IBM Data Server Manager as a teaching aid for new DBAs and system programmers.
Today's global enterprise must manage larger and more complex information management environments. With this increased complexity comes more data and larger tables; more subsystems, objects, and buffer pools; and new utility and metadata options. As the number of experienced DBAs in the workplace declines, your business must focus on efficiency, choose the right options, and avoid unnecessary work. IBM Data Server Manager provides a comprehensive view of your databases and tools that builds upon the existing capabilities of DB2 Automation Tool to maximize efficiency and availability.
- Administrative capabilities
- Database administration
- Catalog navigation
- Policy management
- Automated action and alert resolution
- Manual action and alert resolution
- Automation and performance features
- Monitor DB2
- Read policies
- Generate or modify actions and alerts
- Generate and resolve alerts and actions
Features of an autonomics strategy
- Simple setup and administration
IBM Data Server Manager provides central oversight, default profiles, and a new graphical user interface in addition to the 3270 interface.
- Staged enablement from passive to active stages of management
You can define profiles that manage all database objects from individual tables to the entire DB2 environment.
- Transparency based upon existing autonomic infrastructure
Your autonomics strategy builds on existing DB2 capabilities and infrastructure, including tables, stored procedures, and the Administrative Scheduler. Integration with batch schedulers enables you to run the maintenance jobs that you require during maintenance windows.
- Preservation of existing profiles and utilities
Build on the existing profiles and logic that are found in DB2 Automation Tool and DB2 Utilities Enhancement Tool to automate REORG, COPY, and RUNSTATS operations and incorporate existing batch utilities into your autonomics strategy.
- Extensibility that integrates other tools and products
The DB2 tools in the DB2 Utilities Solution Pack work with all available tools, utilities, and actions as part of a comprehensive solution. Examples of this extensibility include Optim™ Query Workload Tuner, performance tools, and activities that are not performed by utilities, such as WTOs and SMS texts.
Autonomic activities
Autonomics Director for DB2 performs both active and passive activities. The following stages describe the passive activities:
- Collect data: Schedule or trigger data collection; view historical data.
- Analyze and identify symptoms: Schedule or initiate analysis; view and dismiss symptoms.
- Diagnose and prescribe action: View recommendations.
The following stages are active:
- Plan and schedule maintenance window: Define maintenance windows; view and fine tune maintenance windows.
- Perform and take action: Schedule or initiate specific actions.
In any stage of the process, you decide when and how to analyze, identify, diagnose, prescribe, and take action. The following user-defined profiles put you in complete control of the actions that you undertake, either manually or automatically:
- Exception profiles (alerts, thresholds)
- Object profiles
- Utility profiles
- Alert profiles
- Maintenance profiles
The following examples describe typical actions that Autonomics Director for DB2 might recommend:
- DB2 REORG
- Image copy (IC) operations
- RUNSTATS operations
For example, you can monitor your DB2 environment continuously for thresholds and policy compliance issues. Instead of running DB2 Automation tool during batch windows, you can trigger a run in response to conditions in the environment. You can set alerts and thresholds in DB2 Automation Tool, and then when a threshold reached, initiate a REORG manually or automatically in response to the alert.