Guide Share Europe 2022 – my impressions part 3

This week, I want to conclude my impressions of the Guide Share Europe (#gseconf22 and #gseuk) conference, which took place at Whittlebury Manor on 1, 2, and 3 November. I’ll mainly focus on some more of the sessions that I attended. You can read my previous posts here and here.

On Thursday, I started the day with a swim in the pool at the hotel. It’s a very nice pool, and I even had time for five minutes in the jacuzzi. I did pop into the sauna, but didn’t stay very long. It was very hot! Then it was breakfast – listening to people saying how late they had stayed in the bar the previous night! Then it was on to the first session.

I hadn’t been to the CICS stream yet – there were so many good sessions at GSE – but I decided I had to see the always excellent Ezriel Gross give his presentation on “CICS resource definitions as part of a DevOps pipeline”. Ezriel is a Principal Solutions Advisor for Rocket Software. He started by showing the usual DevOps illustration of the stages in the DevOps process, and described how CICS tools could help. He said that CICS Configuration Manager was needed to: manage resource definitions on multiple repositories across diverse environments; make rapid and frequent updates to resource definitions to handle new business requirements; understand the impact of definition attributes on target environments; and identify duplicate, redundant, or inconsistent resource definitions. He went on to look at CICS administration problems and solutions. He discussed editing CICS System Definition (CSD) files and how CICS CM can help. He then demonstrated how to work with CSDs. The next issue that Ezriel looked at was delegating responsibility and how there are some things that application developers can do for themselves, and some that a junior CICS admin can do, and some only a senior CICS admin should do. The next problem that Ezriel looked at involved migrating changes between environments. Again, CICS CM can help. He followed that with a second demo. He looked at the changes across LPAR boundaries, and how to overcome those problems. He also described audit compliance problems and solutions, and problems with zFS support – and how to overcome them. Finally, he showed how all of these fitted in with the DevOps pipeline.

I finished the morning in the Storage stream watching a presentation entitled, “Ransomware recovery – It is more than just getting your data back”, given by MainTegrity’s Al Saurette. The main thrust of Al's presentation was that the focus for most sites is on recovering their data in the event of any problems with it – eg corruption or encryption. Al pointed out that a malicious attack on a mainframe will very likely include timebombs, multiple back doors, and other malicious attacks that occur long before the data is obviously attacked. So, restoring the data leaves these changes in the system, and makes it possible for the bad actors to get into the system again, re-encrypt the database, and you are back to recovering your data. What's needed is some way to determine which components have been affected, and be able to restore them to a trusted state before they were compromised. And to be able to do this quickly and surgically. Al went on to show how it was possible to implement automated prevention and restoration techniques that use browser-based tools to guide the recovery team through the required steps to recover. He looked at the importance of eliminating effort by integrating with immutable backups and existing security tools. Of course, in our ever-changing mainframe world, any software used needs to continuously stays up to date.

Unfortunately, I was called away and missed the afternoon sessions. In my calendar, I was hoping to go to “Using Ansible to accelerate your automation journey for CICS”, which was presented by Stewart Francis, a software engineer at IBM. He has spoken to the Virtual CICS user group, so I knew he would be good. And I was hoping to end the day of presentations with “How to start your CICS Modernisation journey”, presented by Phil Wakelin, a member of the CICS strategy and design team at IBM UK.

I thoroughly recommend the GSE conference. It’s very friendly, the presentations are excellent, it’s useful to talk to the vendors, and it’s great networking with old and new friends. However, if you did miss it, the good news is that there will be an online GSE conference in February on 7^th to 9th. At the moment the details are scarce, but more will be forthcoming soon. And being online, you don’t need to get your manager to pay for your travel and hotel accommodation etc. And people outside the UK and Europe can attend. So, see you there.

Guide Share Europe 2022 – my impressions part 2

This week, I want to continue with my impressions of the Guide Share Europe (#gseconf22 and #gseuk) conference, which took place at Whittlebury Manor on 1, 2, and 3 November. I’ll mainly focus on some more of the sessions that I attended. You can read my previous post here.

Wednesday started with breakfast, which was another opportunity to chat to other attendees. At one stage I was discussing banking with someone from a UK bank and the many ways I felt that banks could improve the service they offer to businesses. For example, because I often get paid in dollars and euros, I would like to have accounts linked to my business account that would simply accept and save those currencies. I could then choose when to convert the payments into sterling. As always, talking to real mainframe users was very illuminating. It also meant that I missed the start of the opening keynote.

I was on time for the “Db2 for z/OS Data Sharing: Configurations and Common Issues”, which was presented by Mark Rader, who is a Db2 for z/OS specialist in the IBM Z Washington Systems Center. Mark started off by explaining that Db2 data sharing and Parallel Sysplex constitute the infrastructure that provides enterprise applications using relational data the highest levels of availability, non-disruptive scalability, and dynamic workload balancing. He looked at the parallel sysplex components and the data sharing concepts. He then drilled down inside the coupling facility to look at lock structure, shared communications areas, and group buffer pools. He then looked at different ways of sharing before moving on to performance issues, availability, and workload balancing. It was a really interesting presentation.

For the next session, I was in the IMS stream watching Tracy Dean, who is an IBM Product Manager responsible for z/VM Tools and IMS Tools, and Ron Bisceglia, who is a Distinguished Engineer and Principal Architect for Rocket Software. Their presentation was called "Customer Experiences Managing the IMS Subsystem". They were both good presenters with a wealth of experience, and it was really interesting to hear about the problems that IMS-using sites have come across (I was going to say, 'got themselves into'!), and how those issues had been resolved using appropriate IMS tools.

After lunch, I was back in the security stream to a presentation about the “IBM Z Cyber Vault” given by Diego Bessone, Global IBM Z Sales Director. I know Dell and Hitachi have similar products, so I was very interested to find out more about IBM’s approach. Basically, what are called ‘safeguarded copies’ of your whole system can be taken every hour (or whatever interval you decide). These copies are stored on air-gapped hardware – an IBM DS8000. At intervals of your choosing, one of those backups is used to IPL a mainframe. This is used to validate the z/OS system, the subsystems and data structures, and the application data. If the backup fails the test, then users can restore from earlier versions. There was some criticism in the room of the approach. For example, the DS8000 isn’t air-gapped if it’s plugged into an infected mainframe. There seemed to be no thought given to onsite procedures like needing someone to be continually booting a mainframe from a backup, or the time it would take to get the right person at a site to give permission to stop all work on the mainframe and start a recovery. There also didn’t seem to be an easy way to find the ‘right’ immutable backup to restore from. I thought it was a great idea, but just needed a bit more work.

I followed up by attending the "What does IBM Z Cyber Vault Mean for an IMS environment?" This was presented by IBM's Tracey Dean. While discussing the Cyber Vault, this was much more practical, for example listing the tools needed to ensure that the IMS data structure was validated, and the tools that were needed for recovery. Tracey also looked at the IMS tools needed for forensic analysis – tools that run in the production environment and produce useful reports about what has happened. Tracey also looked at various recovery scenarios. My one suggestion would be that there is more to recovery than just data recovery. In the event of a breach, bad actors may well have installed back doors and time bombs before encrypting of corrupting data. So, even if all the data – including in-flight tasks – were restored, the hackers could still get in and do the same or worse the next day.

The final afternoon session I attended was "What if You had to Quickly Recover an IMS Database, Could You?", given by Rocket Software's Ron Bisceglia. His was a very practical session, asking questions like whether to recover index data sets or rebuild them. he looked at how to reduce recovery time, MSUs, and human error. He discussed what type of recovery to do, as well as developing a good backup policy. Importantly, he looked at ensuring recovery readiness. he said that recovery needs practice and recovery plans need testing.

I had a meeting, so missed the final keynote. I did go to the drinks session and to the gala dinner. Again, it provided an opportunity to talk to real users, and there were some students on our table, who seemed very enthusiastic about a career in mainframes.

All-in-all, a very interesting day.

The third part of this article will be published next week.

Guide Share Europe 2022 – my impressions part 1

 

The Guide Share Europe (#gseconf22 and #gseuk) conference took place in Whittlebury Manor between 1 and 3 November. And it was brilliant. It was the first in-person conference since 2019 due to Covid and lockdowns etc. And it was great to catch up with old friends and colleagues, and, of course, meet lots of new interesting people who have their own views and opinions on all things to do with mainframes. I also came away with some new T-shirts, pens, and other goodies given away by the various exhibitors there.

In many ways, the most important thing about the GSE conference is that you get to hear the latest thinking in mainframe environments. The number of sessions, including keynotes and lunch & learns must have been in the high hundreds – I estimated 180, but there could well have been more. These were usually divided into streams. Because I am starting the Virtual Db2 user group, I did spend some time in that stream. And because I was speaking in the security stream, I spent some time there. I also look after the Virtual IMS and Virtual CICS user groups, so that was two more streams I needed to visit. And there were some other sessions that caught my attention. I wonder whether the sessions should be recorded so you can catch the sessions you’re forced to miss because of timetable clashes?

The other noticeable thing about the GSE conference is just how friendly everyone is. There are plenty of older mainframers there, as you would expect, but also there were a decent number of younger people there – students, trainees, apprentices, and younger staff. The more experienced mainframers didn’t seem to be planning their retirements yet. However, it can only be a matter of time. Those youngsters will soon be taking on some quite serious responsibilities – and the salaries that go with that responsibility. It’s certainly a better career choice for them than trying to get promoted as a programmer at a games company!

Because of a road traffic accident in Oxford, I was delayed for a long time getting to Whittelbury Manor, so I missed the opening and first keynote. However, I was there in time to see Haakon Roberts talking about "Db2 Version 13 for z/OS: Technical Overview". It was an interesting presentation talking about the number of updates available as PTFs for Version 12 that were now included in V13, plus more. He also looked at what was needed to migrate to V13. A thorough and nicely presented session.

After that, I went to the security stream to see Mark Wilson discuss “Cyber Resiliency - What Does it Actually Mean and How Can I Obtain It?”. Mark has many years of experience working with security, and is GSE UK Region Manager. In an entertaining and interesting talk, Mark managed to engage with most of the audience, who he seemed to be on first name terms with. There were lots of things to think about after the session. Mark had stepped in to give a presentation because the speaker originally timetabled was ill.

After lunch, I was speaking to the security stream about “Ransomware, gaps in SMF records, and detection options”. There were around 30 people in the room, who additionally got to eat the food left by the lunch & learn group that had been using the room at lunch time! I highlighted that SMF wasn’t quite as good as most people imagined. I pointed out the importance of catching a breach in the early stages – long before databases became corrupted – saying that the first thing hackers do is change your infrastructure (parmlib members, system files, even application files). So, if you don’t stop them then (as they install backdoors and time bombs), your restore process has to go back to before the attack started, otherwise the bad actors can let you restore and just attack again! I stressed the need for the software to know which were good backups and to be able to create jobs to restore for you. And how integrity monitoring (IM) software can help.

After a short break, I attended “Finding your way around IMS”, which was presented by Anders Ohrnberg, a user from SEB in Sweden. This was intended as training for people new to IMS and looked at the importance of naming conventions and how it can be done.

After that, I went to see MainTegrity’s Al Saurette present to the Application Development group. His talk was called “DevSecOps – Preventing Supply Chain Attacks while securing your DevOps process”. He used the well-known Solar Winds hack as an example of what could happen, and focused on the best ways to ensure that what was tested and approved, actually got deployed correctly and that it remains in its trusted state.

I was in a meeting, so missed the evening keynotes. Dinner that followed was a buffet, but was again an opportunity to talk to new people and get a better insight into how IT was being used and what problems mainframers were putting at the top of their priority list.

The second part of this article will be published next week.