IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS Version 7.5.14 Release Notes

Please find information about new functions here.

• Accelerator on IIAS-specific considerations

  If you plan to install or upgrade IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator, please contact IBM support by opening a pro-active support case and specify both the current and the target Accelerator maintenance level.
  For an upgrade we would like you to create an Appliance trace and to upload it together with the Transfer log to the support case for an offline health check of the system.

  Important remarks:

  • Configuration parameter APUPGRADE_COMMAND_EXECUTION_TIMEOUT

    Most probably, you had already requested IBM support to change the value of configuration parameter APUPGRADE_COMMAND_EXECUTION_TIMEOUT to 30 minutes during a previous upgrade of the Accelerator.
    Other than assumed the parameter does not control the time for the transfer of the installation package to the accelerator. It governs the time for the validation of the underlying hardware.
    Note:
    It is mandatory to get parameter APUPGRADE_COMMAND_EXECUTION_TIMEOUT changed to a value of 180 minutes prior to transferring the installation package 7.5.14(.1) to the accelerator. 

  • The "Skip firmware and update only accelerator components (faster)" option in Data Studio is no longer supported.

  • The upgrade to Accelerator maintenance level 7.5.14(.1) includes important updates of components of the IIAS software stack, such as

    • An upgrade from RHel 7 to RHel 8 for the nodes any many package updates
    • An upgrade of the General Parallel File System (GPFS)
    • The use of ubi8 based dashDB containers (instead of ubi7)
    • Important security fixes.

    The updates of these components will be accompanied by several reboots during the upgrade. Due to the upgrades of both the software stack and the Firmware and due to the reboots in between,

    • The upgrade time calculated and presented in the transfer log has grown to 6h 45 min.
    • There will be a significant one time add-on bucket of hours (*) that have to be added to the installation time shown in the transfer log to roughly calculate the overall time needed for the upgrade.
      (*) The amount of hours depends on the size of your IIAS machine and varies between 5h 15 min (1/3 rack) and 13h 15 min (double rack).
    • The monitoring of the upgrade progress using the corresponding Data Studio installation log does not allow for a reliable prediction of the duration of the upgrade step just being in progress.
      Multiple reboots will interrupt the log display.
      In rare cases, the installation log remains unaccessible in Data Studio as the start of the REST server of IIAS has failed continuously. 

    Overall:
    The regular time needed to upgrade to Accelerator maintenance level 7.5.14(.1) will be extraordinary long. Depending on the size of the IIAS machine it varies between 12 hours (1/3 rack) and 20 hours (double rack).
    The upgrade is mandatory to ensure continued RedHat and GPFS support.
    We strongly recommend to upgrade to 7.5.14(.1)!

   

  The steps to be performed for an upgrade are identical for all accelerator maintenance levels since 7.5.7:

  Current Accelerator V7 maintenance level	Upgrade to 7.5.14(.1) - required steps	Elapse time needed for applying (*) the software (Ballpark estimation)
  7.5.7.x - 7.5.13.x	Perform a full upgrade to maintenance level 7.5.14(.1)	Between 12 hours (1/3 rack) and 20 hours  (double rack) after replication and accelerators have been stopped) This amount of time noted in the Transfer log is much smaller.

  (*) The time required for downloading the upgrade packages and subsequent transfer to the Accelerator is not included.
  If the reboots occurring during the IIAS platform upgrade would require manual intervention by IBM support, additional time will have to be added to hours roughly calculated.

• Accelerator on Z-specific considerations

  • Important maintenance information (Oct 23, 2025)

    Please verify whether the following information applies to your Accelerator maintenance level or use of the Accelerator

    • Customers moving to new IBM z17 or IBM LinuxONE Emperor 5 hardware:
      • Make sure to install maintenance level 7.5.14.1 rather than 7.5.14.
      • Make sure to run MCL Driver 61C Bundle S15.
    • Customers running 7.5.12.x: please read APAR PH62206. (July 24, 2024)
    • Customers using NVMEs: please read APAR PH62082. (July 4, 2024)
    • Customers not using NVMEs: please read APAR PH62138. (July 4, 2024)

    
     

    • Customers using ESE boot volumes: please read APAR PH63191. (May 30, 2025)

    
     

    • Customers running maintenance level 7.5.13.1 and wanting to extend their data pool, please read APAR PH66571. (May 30, 2025)
    • Customers running maintenance level 7.5.13.1 and wanting to define a second runtime_section in their JSON file, please read APAR PH66520. (May 30, 2025)

  • New underlying Linux kernel - End User License Agreement (May 30, 2025)

    Starting with maintenance level 7.5.14, the underlying Linux kernel incorporated by the Accelerator on IBM Z has been exchanged. Rather than Ubuntu-Linux, the Accelerator is now embedding a Linux kernel from RedHat. Please make sure to be aware of the following license agreement:
    "The Red Hat Software contained in this product is governed by the End User License Agreement ("EULA") set forth at redhat.com/agreements and any distribution is conditioned on providing such EULA to the end user".

  • Planning the installation or upgrade (Feb 21, 2024)

    If you plan to install or upgrade IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator or if you plan a HW-related action such as Power-On/Reset or DASD-migration in context of GDPS, please contact IBM support by opening a pro-active support case.
    For an upgrade we would like to know

    • What is your current Accelerator maintenance level and what is the one you want to upgrade to?
    • What is the model type number and the MCL level of the IBM Z hardware hosting the Accelerator to be upgraded?
    • Are you using GDPS for the IBM Z hardware hosting the Accelerator?
    • Are you planning actions on the IBM Z hardware in parallel with the upgrade, such as
      • Upgrade of the MCL; if yes, please specify the target MCL level
      • DASD migration
      • Power On / Reset (POR)
      • Microcode updates on Storage Units.

    Please upload your the current json configuration file to the support case.

  • Support of NVMEs

    • Adaptation of the JSON configuration file

      Using local NVMe storage as transient storage for temporary files is highly recommended for large multi-node Accelerator deployments to improve performance and stability.
      The exploitation requires adaptation of the JSON configuration file:

      • The keyword “transient_storage”:”NVMe” must be set in all the “runtime_environments” sections.
        If specified, all available NVMe devices within a LinuxONE system (LinuxONE local storage) are used as temporary storage.
      • For use of NVMes, the parameter “temp_working_space” must be removed from the JSON configuration file.

      For further details, please see the technote Configuring and using transient storage for IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS on Z .

    • Required MCL level

      The use of NMVEs requires an appropriate MCL level. We recommend customer to update to Bundle S92 (for IBM z15) or Bundle S27 (for IBM z16) or later.

  • OSA Express 7s or 6s cards

    When using an OSA Express 7s or 6s card in shared mode, the installation of D41C Bundle S80a (for IBM z15) or D51C Bundle S22a (for IBM z16) could lead to connectivity problems between Db2 for z/OS LPAR and the accelerator LPAR residing on the same mainframe server. Shared mode means that the network traffic does not go to a switch.
    Recommendation: If you are running a layer 2 host to a layer 3 host and using a shared OSA adapter with the OSA doing the internal routing between the LPARs, we recommend to update to Bundle S92 (z15) or Bundle S27 (z16) (or later) accordingly.
    Note: There won't be a connectivity problem if the OSA card is shared but the internal path is not used, meaning: the network traffic is routed by an external switch.

  • Using RoCE cards for inter-node communication in accelerator multi-node clusters (Nov 21, 2024)

    Are you running accelerator multi-node clusters and using RoCE cards for inter-node communication? If the answer is Yes and if the clusters are hosted on IBM z15™ or IBM LinuxONE™ III hardware which is operated in DPM mode, please be aware of the following:

    • We strongly recommend to upgrade your MCL to D41C SE Bundle S92 (including MCL P46598.557) or later..
      Without the mentioned MCL level, a Power On/Reset action on your hardware will lead to a change of the FIDs of the RoCE cards upon Power On. Subsequently a manual adaptation of the RoCE-FIDs in your json configuration file would become necessary to make the accelerator multi-node cluster work again. For more information, please see PH59572.
    • After Power On, the RoCE cards will be in status STOPPED. A manual activation using HMC/DPM will be required.
      This need goes back to an architectural limitation of the IBM z15 environment.

  • Installation/upgrade issue occurring in context of an MCL-upgrade

    Customers who performed an MCL upgrade on a LinuxONE III system have reported that the installation of the Accelerator could not be completed as the Admin UI screens did not show up with buttons. For more information, please see APAR PH59109.

• Mandatory settings for the setup of Integrated Synchronization (published with 7.5.6)

  • Excluding suspended tables from accelerated queries

    The administrator must grant the following privileges to the Db2 for z/OS user ID having been specified during enabling of the subsystem for replication using IBM Integrated Synchronization:

    • EXECUTE on the SYSPROC.ACCEL_SET_TABLES_ACCELERATION stored procedure
    • RACF ACCESS(READ) on the data set that contains the AQTENV file in the started task procedure of the Workload Manager (WLM) environment
    • RACF ACCESS(READ) on the data set that contains the AQTDEF6 file in the started task procedure of the Workload Manager (WLM) environment
    • Define an OMVS segment in the Resource Access Control Facility (RACF)

  • Support of schema changes (Add/Alter column)

    • If the schema change affects columns of the type TIMESTAMP, you must also install the PTF UI73158 for Db2 for z/OS (APAR PH31772)
    • The Db2 for z/OS user you specified when you enabled IBM Integrated Synchronization must have the following additional privileges:
      • SELECT privilege on SYSIBM.SYSTABLES, SYSIBM.SYSCOLUMNS
      • SELECT, UPDATE privilege on SYSIBM.SYSACCELERATEDTABLES

• Replication using IIDR/CDC - mandatory settings for the setup of z/OS component ICFS (Nov 21, 2024)

  The IIDR/CDC-based replication component of Db2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS uses a jdbc driver-based connection to Db2 for z/OS to write processing information into CDC-owned Db2 tables. With Accelerator maintenance level 7.5.13, a new jdbc-driver (4.33.32) is used. This new driver requires an AES-256 encryption for the communication mentioned before. To utilize an AES-256 encryption, the z/OS component Integrated Cryptographic Service Facility (ICSF) needs to be set up accordingly. Without the customization of ICSF for AES-256, the communication with Db2 for z/OS and the writing of data to CDC will not work and cause the replication to fail.
  In case the customization of ICSF for use of AES-256 encryption would absolutely not be an option, please contact IBM support for an alternate solution path.

Click here for the list of APARs having been fixed and the APARs in status OPEN.

Click here for the Release Notes of the Stored Procedures.

The SYSPROC.ACCEL_LOAD_TABLES stored procedure behaves differently if automatic change detection is enabled.
Before version 7.1.7, a load job with a setting of detectChanges=“DATA” sometimes did not capture the changes in all partitions if the lock mode NONE had been used for the previous load.
This was fixed with version 7.1.7.

The new behavior:
If you use lock mode NONE and detectChanges=“DATA”,

• it can happen that more changes are detected than are transferred to the accelerator. This is caused by the SKIP LOCKED DATA option, which is used implicitly by the Db2 Unload Utility. If parts of the data were locked by other processes, then this data is ignored and not unloaded to the accelerator.
• therefore, a partition in an accelerator-shadow table is always fully reloaded to ensure that all changes are finally transferred. A reload is started even if the partition had no further changes since then.

Open APARs

• Click here for a list of open (and closed) APARs.

General recommendations

• Under a high system load, the accelerator might appear slow or run into timeouts.

  Recommendation: Do not run more than 30 load threads in parallel.

Queries

• A query running during a partial reload of an incrementally updated table might be unable to access the new partitions.

  Recommendation: Rerun the query after the partial reload has finished.

• A query referencing several tables using union all views could run slower than V5.
  Example use cases are when union all views are used for collecting data from multiple branch offices and each branch-office has a schema-identical table that your are all referencing in a single query.

  Recommendation: Contact IBM support for assistance.

Loading tables

• After running the REORG utility in Db2 12 for z/OS,  reloads might be wrongly recommended for partitions that have already been loaded on the accelerator.

  Recommendation: To receive correct reload recommendations, do not use interactive load recommendations and batch job change detection at the same time.

Incremental updates

• CDC-based replication: The time needed to reload a set of incrementally updated tables increases as well as the replication latency.

  Recommendation: Pause after each reload, as this allows the system to come back to normal throughput rates and latency levels.
  As an alternative: use Integrated Synchronization based replication.

Monitoring

• The values of the monitoring counter Q8STTMUD are too high, for example 0.18E+20.

  Recommendation: Ignore the high value. It will be corrected during the next collection of statistics.

• The monitoring values of the Q8STCQL, Q8STCQLS, and Q8STQUEW metrics might be displayed incorrectly.

Accelerator Studio GUI

• "Transfer certificates" for "Encryption of Data in Motion" in DataStudio based GUI only allows file extension ".crt" for certificate transfers, not ".p12".

  Recommendation: When transferring a certificate for "Encryption of Data in Motion", then locate the certificate file on your client and change the extension from ".p12" to ".crt". The certificate file will then become visible in the available certificates box of the GUI, so that you can transfer it.

High Performance Storage Saver (Feb 21, 2024)

• Be aware of the following issue that was reported as new with Accelerator maintenance level 7.5.12(.1):
  • PH58965

Miscellaneous

• Under a very high system load caused by the parallel execution of various operations, such as 'Add Tables', 'Remove Tables', and 'Alter Keys', the accelerator might restart unexpectedly, leading to the abortion of running tasks or queries.
  Symptoms are aborted tasks, lock timeout exceptions, or messages with SQL code -911, SQLSTATE=40001, and rc=68.

  Recommendation: Reduce the task diversity of parallel jobs if you process large table sets with more than 100 tables. For example, do not run 'Alter Keys', 'Add Tables', and 'Remove Tables' operations at the same time. Reduce this to 'Alter Keys' and 'Add Tables' jobs or any other combination of just two different tasks.
  If a query failed, rerun the query.

• When a date literal in a LOCAL date format DD/MM/YYYY or YYYYMMDD is CAST as a CHAR or VARCHAR, the result is not the local date format but rather ISO.
  For example: CAST(DATE('22/11/2018') AS CHAR(10)) will return 2018-11-22 instead of '22/11/2018'.

  Recommendation: None