Every year, about this time, mainframe users are excited to get their hands on the latest edition of the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook. What makes the Yearbook stand out is that it’s an excellent reference work for all IBM mainframe professionals – no matter how many years of experience they have.
What makes this annual publication so important? The answer is that it provides a one-stop shop for everything a mainframer needs to know. For example, the technical specification section includes model numbers, MIPS, and MSUs for zEnterprise processors (zEC12s, z196s and z114s). There’s also a hardware timeline, and a display of mainframe operating system evolution.
In addition, there’s the glossary of terminology section explaining what all those acronyms stand for, in a way that means you can understand them.
One section provides a media guide for IBM mainframers. This includes information on newsletters, magazines, user groups, blogs, and social networking information resources for the z/OS environment. Amongst the things it highlights are Enterprise Tech Journal, IBM Listservs, SHARE’s Five Minute Briefing on the Data Center, Facebook (fan) pages, and LinkedIn discussions. As well as user groups such as SHARE and IDUG.
The vendor directory section contains an up-to-date list of vendors, consultants, and service providers working in the z/OS environment. There’s a summary of the products they supply and contact information. As usual, there are a number of new organizations in the list this year, and, sadly, a few familiar names have ceased trading.
The mainframe strategy section contains articles by industry gurus and vendors on topics such as: Where is the COBOL in your SOA?; Lost without a trace?; and Challenging times lead to new tools for z/OS control and network management.
For many people the highlight each year is the mainframe user survey. This illustrates just what’s been happening at users’ sites. It’s a good way for mainframers to compare what they are planning to do with what other sites have done. I will be looking at some of the survey highlights in a future blog.
The other great thing about the Yearbook – as far as many of the 20,000 people who download it are concerned – is that it is completely FREE.
It can only be free because some organizations have been prepared to sponsor it or advertise in it. This year’s sponsors were: Software AG, Software Diversified Services (SDS), and William Data Systems.
To see this year’s Arcati Mainframe Yearbook, click on www.arcati.com/newyearbook13. If you don’t want to download everything at once, again this year, each section is available as a separate PDF file.
Don’t miss out on this excellent publication.
Showing posts with label William Data Systems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Data Systems. Show all posts
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Sunday, 9 December 2012
Putting it all together
I was chatting to Tony Amies, product architect at William Data Systems, about the best way to get information from a mainframe (and about what’s happening on that mainframe) out to someone who has access to a browser. He had a number of nifty techniques that I’d like to share with you.
Assuming you want to get the information from your mainframe to a browser, your first really big decision is do you want to go with two-tier architecture, or do you want to go with three-tier architecture? Tony’s advice was that two-tier was enough.
That leads to the second really important decision to be made, which is where should the processing take place? You’ve got to look at what needs to be done and then make a choice about which platform does that work best on. So, for example, and perhaps quite obviously, if you want to monitor what’s going on with IP, FTP, or EE (Enterprise Extender) on your mainframe, you want that processing to take place on the mainframe. That all seems fairly easy!
But what do you want to do with your results from those different monitors (and indeed any other monitoring software you have running)? Do you want to look like mission control and have a 3270 screen for each monitor that’s running. Now, I remember how impressed visitors used to be when they saw something like that, but if my plan is to get the information to laptop or tablet device running a browser, then I probably need to consolidate the different feeds first. And, again, I want to do that on the mainframe, in the same LPAR (Logical PARtition) that the monitors are running in. It makes sense because much less work has to be done than if I choose to send that data somewhere else for processing.
If you’re familiar with WDS products, you know about their ZEN monitor for their other products. They’re written in Assemble and C and they use a little DLL inside each product that talks to a DLL in ZEN and you can see a nice display of what’s going on – on everything. As a side note, using the DLLs allows the products to talk to each other, so that if the IP monitor spots something, then the IP trace tool can be used to investigate further.
So, using the two-tier architecture, ZEN is logically split into two parts. One part is mainframe friendly and one part is Web friendly. Associated with the Web-friendly part of ZEN are the necessary JavaScript libraries and JQuery libraries, and the usual HTML bits. If you’ve not come across JQuery before, it’s like a lot of clever JavaScript that’s been already written that you can use to make your Web site look very modern. Lots of sites use the jQuery lightBox plugin to show photos.
There’s always a problem with busy Web pages in that lots of information has to come from the server to the browser, resulting in lots of network traffic – and if you’re monitoring your mainframe’s network from a browser there can be even more. So the first technique they’ve used is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which means that only the parts of the Web page that have changed are sent, the rest of the page stays the same. They also use JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) as a lightweight data-interchange format.
But there’s always an issue with any User Interface and that’s how to separate the actual user interface itself from the business logic behind it. In technical terms, these are known as the view model and the data model. To make this work as effectively as possible, they’re using MVVM (Model View ViewModel), which is a framework or architectural pattern coming originally from Microsoft, but now extended to include JavaScript MVVM. You can get a clearer idea of the sorts of things they’ve done – and perhaps the sorts of things you could do from knockoutjs.com. The site describes itself as “simplifying dynamic javaScript UIs by applying the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern”. The WDS developers also familiarized themselves with prototypejs.org, a site describing itself as “a foundation for ambitious web user interfaces”. They go on to say: “Prototype takes the complexity out of client-side web programming”.
For WDS, basically an object is requested from the browser by the user. This goes up to ZEN. Using JSON, a data object comes down and binds with the layout defined in the MVVM skeleton. As a user, you see dynamically updated information in your browser. If one new value affects other values, those other values are automatically update appropriately.
I’m not endorsing WDS’s products, I’m saying that they have very effectively made use of the very latest technology at the browser end to make their product work very efficiently. I’m suggesting that the two-tier architecture with really clever stuff on the browser side is definitely worth taking a look at.
Assuming you want to get the information from your mainframe to a browser, your first really big decision is do you want to go with two-tier architecture, or do you want to go with three-tier architecture? Tony’s advice was that two-tier was enough.
That leads to the second really important decision to be made, which is where should the processing take place? You’ve got to look at what needs to be done and then make a choice about which platform does that work best on. So, for example, and perhaps quite obviously, if you want to monitor what’s going on with IP, FTP, or EE (Enterprise Extender) on your mainframe, you want that processing to take place on the mainframe. That all seems fairly easy!
But what do you want to do with your results from those different monitors (and indeed any other monitoring software you have running)? Do you want to look like mission control and have a 3270 screen for each monitor that’s running. Now, I remember how impressed visitors used to be when they saw something like that, but if my plan is to get the information to laptop or tablet device running a browser, then I probably need to consolidate the different feeds first. And, again, I want to do that on the mainframe, in the same LPAR (Logical PARtition) that the monitors are running in. It makes sense because much less work has to be done than if I choose to send that data somewhere else for processing.
If you’re familiar with WDS products, you know about their ZEN monitor for their other products. They’re written in Assemble and C and they use a little DLL inside each product that talks to a DLL in ZEN and you can see a nice display of what’s going on – on everything. As a side note, using the DLLs allows the products to talk to each other, so that if the IP monitor spots something, then the IP trace tool can be used to investigate further.
So, using the two-tier architecture, ZEN is logically split into two parts. One part is mainframe friendly and one part is Web friendly. Associated with the Web-friendly part of ZEN are the necessary JavaScript libraries and JQuery libraries, and the usual HTML bits. If you’ve not come across JQuery before, it’s like a lot of clever JavaScript that’s been already written that you can use to make your Web site look very modern. Lots of sites use the jQuery lightBox plugin to show photos.
There’s always a problem with busy Web pages in that lots of information has to come from the server to the browser, resulting in lots of network traffic – and if you’re monitoring your mainframe’s network from a browser there can be even more. So the first technique they’ve used is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), which means that only the parts of the Web page that have changed are sent, the rest of the page stays the same. They also use JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) as a lightweight data-interchange format.
But there’s always an issue with any User Interface and that’s how to separate the actual user interface itself from the business logic behind it. In technical terms, these are known as the view model and the data model. To make this work as effectively as possible, they’re using MVVM (Model View ViewModel), which is a framework or architectural pattern coming originally from Microsoft, but now extended to include JavaScript MVVM. You can get a clearer idea of the sorts of things they’ve done – and perhaps the sorts of things you could do from knockoutjs.com. The site describes itself as “simplifying dynamic javaScript UIs by applying the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern”. The WDS developers also familiarized themselves with prototypejs.org, a site describing itself as “a foundation for ambitious web user interfaces”. They go on to say: “Prototype takes the complexity out of client-side web programming”.
For WDS, basically an object is requested from the browser by the user. This goes up to ZEN. Using JSON, a data object comes down and binds with the layout defined in the MVVM skeleton. As a user, you see dynamically updated information in your browser. If one new value affects other values, those other values are automatically update appropriately.
I’m not endorsing WDS’s products, I’m saying that they have very effectively made use of the very latest technology at the browser end to make their product work very efficiently. I’m suggesting that the two-tier architecture with really clever stuff on the browser side is definitely worth taking a look at.
Monday, 30 July 2012
Whatever happened to IPv6?
IPv4 is pretty much everywhere. It uses 32-bit addresses, which means (and you can check the maths on this) that there is a finite number of IP addresses that people can use – 4,294,967,296 addresses, in fact. Although the number of available addresses seems pretty large, you only have to look round at how online everything is to recognize that those addresses will run out. In fact, they already have – although techniques such as Network Address Translation (NAT), classful network design, and Classless Inter-Domain Routing have helped to keep everything working.
Back in the 1990s people (including me) were writing about the address limitation of IPv4, and the proposed solution was IPv6, which, after a very long gestation period, became commercially available in 2006. World IPv6 Launch day was as recently as 6 June 2012. The big selling point of IPv6 is that it uses 128-bit addressing, which results in far more addresses being available for people to use – 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 apparently.
An IPv4 address looks like: 192.169.1.62. An IPv6 address looks like: 2001:0db8:85a3:0042:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. And that’s the problem that many organizations face. How to they convert from IPv4 to IPv6? How do they translate their addresses? How do they test these new addresses when they need to maintain a working business environment?
William Data Systems (WDS) has come up with a new module for its ZEN system called the ZEN Application Gateway – or ZAG. WDS has found that many of its customers are currently facing the costs and risks of changes to applications, networks, and hardware. ZAG helps implement IPv6 under z/OS by minimizing the need for companies to make any changes to their applications, hardware, or networks. ZAG users can input IPv4 and get out IPv6, or they can do things the other way round.
And while z/OS sites are able to run separate IPv4 and IPv6 stacks – in fact, keeping the two IP stacks segregated like this may be something many chose to do because it enables them to keep their IPv6 testing traffic separate from their production IPv4 traffic – one thing they could use ZAG for is to sit in between the two stacks and act as a bridge, allowing IPv6 clients in one stack to access IPv4 applications in another stack (and vice versa). Obviously, sites could do achieve the same thing without ZAG, but they would need to weigh up the additional costs and risks (as well as management time) resulting from application, network, and hardware changes.
According to WDS’s press release, ZAG “allows customers to:
Back in the 1990s people (including me) were writing about the address limitation of IPv4, and the proposed solution was IPv6, which, after a very long gestation period, became commercially available in 2006. World IPv6 Launch day was as recently as 6 June 2012. The big selling point of IPv6 is that it uses 128-bit addressing, which results in far more addresses being available for people to use – 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 apparently.
An IPv4 address looks like: 192.169.1.62. An IPv6 address looks like: 2001:0db8:85a3:0042:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. And that’s the problem that many organizations face. How to they convert from IPv4 to IPv6? How do they translate their addresses? How do they test these new addresses when they need to maintain a working business environment?
William Data Systems (WDS) has come up with a new module for its ZEN system called the ZEN Application Gateway – or ZAG. WDS has found that many of its customers are currently facing the costs and risks of changes to applications, networks, and hardware. ZAG helps implement IPv6 under z/OS by minimizing the need for companies to make any changes to their applications, hardware, or networks. ZAG users can input IPv4 and get out IPv6, or they can do things the other way round.
And while z/OS sites are able to run separate IPv4 and IPv6 stacks – in fact, keeping the two IP stacks segregated like this may be something many chose to do because it enables them to keep their IPv6 testing traffic separate from their production IPv4 traffic – one thing they could use ZAG for is to sit in between the two stacks and act as a bridge, allowing IPv6 clients in one stack to access IPv4 applications in another stack (and vice versa). Obviously, sites could do achieve the same thing without ZAG, but they would need to weigh up the additional costs and risks (as well as management time) resulting from application, network, and hardware changes.
According to WDS’s press release, ZAG “allows customers to:
- Test new IPv6 applications using their existing IPv4 infrastructure
- Access their IPv4 applications from new IPv6 clients
- Segregate their IPv6 and IPv4 traffic on different IP stacks
- Act as a bridge, allowing traffic to connect between IPv6 and IPv4 stacks
- Provide pseudo Network Address Translation (NAT) capabilities in an IPv6 environment, which is very useful if you want to hide internal IPv6 addresses from the outside world.”
If you are at SHARE in Anaheim between 5 and 10 August, WDS will be demonstrating their ZEN suite on a Raspberry Pi. WDS comment this is: “just in case hardware budgets keep reducing!” Adding that one lucky delegate will win the Raspberry Pi in the SHARE prize draw.
Here’s a photo of their Raspberry Pi in action!
Moving from the limited IPv4 to IPv6 is something that people have been talking about for a long time. It now looks like the time to actually migrate is here. Anything that makes the job easier (and the painless) has got to be a good thing.
Moving from the limited IPv4 to IPv6 is something that people have been talking about for a long time. It now looks like the time to actually migrate is here. Anything that makes the job easier (and the painless) has got to be a good thing.
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Linux divisions
Linus Torvalds released Linux on 5 October 1991, and by 1998 IBM was experimenting with it. In 2000 it was properly available on mainframes – along with the specialty processor IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux). The rest, as they say, is history.
As well as mainframes, Linux, of course, runs on desktops and servers. The Mac OS is based on Unix, but Android – found on millions of smartphones and tablets – is based on Linux.
So what divisions am I talking about? The division between big iron and little? Well not really. In fact, interestingly, the people at William Data Systems have come out with a way of monitoring Linux whether it’s on a mainframe or server somewhere else in the world. As long as it has an IP address, they have a way of monitoring it (using z/OS as the hub).
No, the first division I want to look at is the division between the USA (or North America, I should say) and Europe. The recent Arcati Mainframe Yearbook user survey (still freely available at www.arcati.com/newyearbook12) came up with some interesting results. The survey found that 70% of European sites surveyed didn't have Linux, whereas only 28% of North American sites in the surveyed didn’t. That’s a huge difference. And if you were IBM, you might well be wondering why Linux isn’t selling into Europe so well as North America.
Let’s speculate. Is it that North America is well ahead of the curve in terms of take up of mainframe Linux? Is it that mainframe Linux is priced differently either side of the pond so it encourages the take up in the USA but not Europe? Or could it be that IFLs are marked up or down depending on whether the customer is EMEA-based or not? Are IFLs being bundled in with upgrades or not depending on where in the world you’re based? I have recently had some nudges and winks over prices, and it could well be that European mainframe users are being charged double what their US-based counterpart might expect to pay. I’d be interested to hear what figure people, who’ve recently negotiated with IBM, have haggled them down to. You might also wonder whether now is a good time to buy shares in SuSE, who have about an 80% share of the mainframe Linux market. Will we see it suddenly explode in Europe? Or not?
The other division that’s recently cropped up with Linux is how users navigate. I guess we’re all pretty much familiar with using drop-down menus to access what we want – and we can probably use them to find our way around familiar applications without even thinking about it. Even very young childen take to that way of navigating like it was second nature. But just recently we’ve seen the introduction of Heads Up Displays (HUDs) for Ubuntu’s Linux.
What you get is a sort of semi-transparent area at the top of the screen, which acts in some ways like the ribbon with Office. HUD provides a search style interface that uses a Vocabulary UI (VUI). Users start to type or say a command, and the HUD starts a smart look-ahead search through the application and system (indicator) menus. By combining fuzzy matching with a learning function, the HUD begins to ‘recognize’ the actions of each individual user.
If you want to give it a go, HUD will be available in Ubuntu 12.04 towards the end of April.
Now I’m guessing that, like Microsoft’s ribbon, and Marmite, users will either love it or hate it. The idea that it will use voice indicates to me that we’re back to the original Star Trek computer idea – a computer that you can talk to. This was an idea that went away for a while because, to be honest, voice reconition software just wasn’t up to the job. But now we’ve had Siri on iPhones for a while, and people are coming back to the idea that talking to a computer isn’t such a silly idea after all.
I’ve only spoken to one person who’s used the HUD and he was singing its praises. But he is very familiar with Linux and the Ubuntu distro, so maybe he had a clearer idea of what to ask the HUD to do for him – in terms of getting any work done – than, for example, I might have.
Perhaps one day we’ll see a HUD on mainframe Linux. And perhaps we’ll see more mainframe Linux sites in Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Or will the divisions continue?
As well as mainframes, Linux, of course, runs on desktops and servers. The Mac OS is based on Unix, but Android – found on millions of smartphones and tablets – is based on Linux.
So what divisions am I talking about? The division between big iron and little? Well not really. In fact, interestingly, the people at William Data Systems have come out with a way of monitoring Linux whether it’s on a mainframe or server somewhere else in the world. As long as it has an IP address, they have a way of monitoring it (using z/OS as the hub).
No, the first division I want to look at is the division between the USA (or North America, I should say) and Europe. The recent Arcati Mainframe Yearbook user survey (still freely available at www.arcati.com/newyearbook12) came up with some interesting results. The survey found that 70% of European sites surveyed didn't have Linux, whereas only 28% of North American sites in the surveyed didn’t. That’s a huge difference. And if you were IBM, you might well be wondering why Linux isn’t selling into Europe so well as North America.
Let’s speculate. Is it that North America is well ahead of the curve in terms of take up of mainframe Linux? Is it that mainframe Linux is priced differently either side of the pond so it encourages the take up in the USA but not Europe? Or could it be that IFLs are marked up or down depending on whether the customer is EMEA-based or not? Are IFLs being bundled in with upgrades or not depending on where in the world you’re based? I have recently had some nudges and winks over prices, and it could well be that European mainframe users are being charged double what their US-based counterpart might expect to pay. I’d be interested to hear what figure people, who’ve recently negotiated with IBM, have haggled them down to. You might also wonder whether now is a good time to buy shares in SuSE, who have about an 80% share of the mainframe Linux market. Will we see it suddenly explode in Europe? Or not?
The other division that’s recently cropped up with Linux is how users navigate. I guess we’re all pretty much familiar with using drop-down menus to access what we want – and we can probably use them to find our way around familiar applications without even thinking about it. Even very young childen take to that way of navigating like it was second nature. But just recently we’ve seen the introduction of Heads Up Displays (HUDs) for Ubuntu’s Linux.
What you get is a sort of semi-transparent area at the top of the screen, which acts in some ways like the ribbon with Office. HUD provides a search style interface that uses a Vocabulary UI (VUI). Users start to type or say a command, and the HUD starts a smart look-ahead search through the application and system (indicator) menus. By combining fuzzy matching with a learning function, the HUD begins to ‘recognize’ the actions of each individual user.
If you want to give it a go, HUD will be available in Ubuntu 12.04 towards the end of April.
Now I’m guessing that, like Microsoft’s ribbon, and Marmite, users will either love it or hate it. The idea that it will use voice indicates to me that we’re back to the original Star Trek computer idea – a computer that you can talk to. This was an idea that went away for a while because, to be honest, voice reconition software just wasn’t up to the job. But now we’ve had Siri on iPhones for a while, and people are coming back to the idea that talking to a computer isn’t such a silly idea after all.
I’ve only spoken to one person who’s used the HUD and he was singing its praises. But he is very familiar with Linux and the Ubuntu distro, so maybe he had a clearer idea of what to ask the HUD to do for him – in terms of getting any work done – than, for example, I might have.
Perhaps one day we’ll see a HUD on mainframe Linux. And perhaps we’ll see more mainframe Linux sites in Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Or will the divisions continue?
Saturday, 14 January 2012
The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2012 has been published
Every year, about this time, mainframe users are excited to get their hands on the latest edition of the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook. What makes the Yearbook stand out is that it’s an excellent reference work for all IBM mainframe professionals – no matter how many years of experience they have.
What makes this annual publication so important? The answer is that it provides a one-stop shop for everything a mainframer needs to know. For example, the technical specification section includes model numbers, MIPS, and MSUs for zEnterprise processors (z196s and z114s). There’s also a hardware timeline, and a display of mainframe operating system evolution.
In addition, there’s the glossary of terminology section explaining simply what all those acronyms stand for, but in a way that means you can understand them.
In addition, there’s the glossary of terminology section explaining simply what all those acronyms stand for, but in a way that means you can understand them.
One section provides a media guide for IBM mainframers. This includes information on newsletters, magazines, user groups, blogs, and social networking information resources for the z/OS environment. Amongst the things it highlights are zJournal, INSIGHT-SPECTRA, IBM Listservs, SHARE’s Five Minute Briefing on the Data Center, Facebook fan pages, and LinkedIn discussions. As well as user groups such as SHARE and IDUG.
The vendor directory section contains an up-to-date list of vendors, consultants, and service providers working in the z/OS environment. There’s a summary of the products they supply and contact information. There are a number of new organizations in the list this year, and, sadly, a few familiar names have ceased trading.
The mainframe strategy section contains articles by industry gurus and vendors on topics such as: Why incremental process-driven IT modernization is relevant for your business; Network management for the modern data centre; Next-generation mainframe management; Best practices for application release management; Peeling the onion of SFTP: options for securing file transfer to and from z/OS.
For many people the highlight each year is the mainframe user survey. This illustrates just what’s been happening at users’ sites. It’s a good way for mainframers to compare what they are planning to do with what other sites have done. I will be looking at some of the survey highlights in my next blog.
The other great thing about the Yearbook – as far as many of the 15,000 people who download it are concerned – is that it is completely FREE.
It can only be free because some organizations have been prepared to sponsor it or advertise in it. This year’s sponsors were: CA Technologies, Serena Software, Software AG, Software Diversified Services (SDS), Type80 Security Software, and William Data Systems.
To see this year's Arcati Mainframe Yearbook, click on www.arcati.com/newyearbook12. If you don't want to download a large PDF, again this year, each section is available as a separate PDF file.
Don't miss out on this excellent publication.
Sunday, 11 December 2011
Sunk without trace
There was a time when using the trace facility was really the final strategy. You’d perhaps have tried everything else to find what was going wrong first. And when nothing seemed to have worked, you’d equip yourself with all the necessary manuals – and that could be quite a few – and run the trace and start the hard job of interpreting the results. And then try to fix the problem. Those days are long gone thanks to more modern software tools, but, to many people, the memories linger on!
I recently bumped into William Data Systems’ Tony Amies, who took the time to show me some of the things he was working on. And one of those things was making trace much, much, more user friendly.
Tony showed me WDS’s ZEN product, which, as you may know, allows lots of network monitoring information to be collated and viewed from anywhere using a browser. Information can appear as coloured boxes, which once you clicked on them display more-and-more information in a clever drill-down manner. Fairly quickly, you can identify the component that has exceeded some predetermined threshold.
WDS has a number of products in the ZEN family and you can use buttons on the browser to switch between them – giving you information about different aspects of performance. ZIM the ZEN IP MONITOR can detect error conditions, then ZEN TRACE and SOLVE (ZTS – which used to be called EXIGENCE) can be used to start, stop, and view traces. Now that has got to be so much easier than in the Old Days!
Tony showed how a TCP trace could be carried out in seconds, explaining that there were lots of commands embedded in it. Tony explained how network tracing can be so difficult. For example, using Enterprise Extender, which allows SNA applications to run over TCP networks, results in encapsulated messages. Tony demonstrated software that was able to look inside the message to see what was there – in terms of different types of header. He then explained how this works with FMH5, UDP, IP, APPN, HPR, and more. He explained that sites using the Cisco load balancing GRE tunnelling protocol can also be opened to see the true header for the message. All very clever stuff – and no manuals in sight.
In fact, on a number of occasions a right mouse click on some information in the display would produce a pop-up box explaining exactly what some term or other actually meant. So there was no need for any manuals. The display could show delays, highlight response time problems, and the TCP window size.
Tony also showed me a piece of software that drew a diagram of a Sysplex Distributor – which shows the IP addresses and links on a mainframe system. The software also highlighted where there were issues. And, like the rest of the software we looked at, you could drill down to find exactly where any problem were. In fact, Tony was sure that this would allow customers to identify potential issues before their users did. Behind the scenes, information from netstat and other commands were being used to drive the display.
We talked about customers being able to build business service views of what was going on their system and how useful that would be for each of their customers. That kind of bespoke requirement wasn’t something that Tony could necessarily build into the software, but all it requires is a knowledge of REXX to make it happen. And most z/OS sites have at least one person who code in REXX.
Lastly, we talked about problem resolution when you have two or more systems that don’t seem to be talking to each other. Currently, you need to log into each system and run traces to find out which of the systems has the problem. Tony plans to implement a ‘grouptrace’ feature that allows the user to tell the software to run a trace on these two (or more) systems. The results will come back from both systems and be visible from the browser. The results will be displayed in timestamp order and it will be possible to see on which of the systems the problem is. As easy that.
Too often we’d be sunk without a trace facility. Now we have an example of a way to be able to use trace across multiple systems and simply click to drill down to identify the problem.
I recently bumped into William Data Systems’ Tony Amies, who took the time to show me some of the things he was working on. And one of those things was making trace much, much, more user friendly.
Tony showed me WDS’s ZEN product, which, as you may know, allows lots of network monitoring information to be collated and viewed from anywhere using a browser. Information can appear as coloured boxes, which once you clicked on them display more-and-more information in a clever drill-down manner. Fairly quickly, you can identify the component that has exceeded some predetermined threshold.
WDS has a number of products in the ZEN family and you can use buttons on the browser to switch between them – giving you information about different aspects of performance. ZIM the ZEN IP MONITOR can detect error conditions, then ZEN TRACE and SOLVE (ZTS – which used to be called EXIGENCE) can be used to start, stop, and view traces. Now that has got to be so much easier than in the Old Days!
Tony showed how a TCP trace could be carried out in seconds, explaining that there were lots of commands embedded in it. Tony explained how network tracing can be so difficult. For example, using Enterprise Extender, which allows SNA applications to run over TCP networks, results in encapsulated messages. Tony demonstrated software that was able to look inside the message to see what was there – in terms of different types of header. He then explained how this works with FMH5, UDP, IP, APPN, HPR, and more. He explained that sites using the Cisco load balancing GRE tunnelling protocol can also be opened to see the true header for the message. All very clever stuff – and no manuals in sight.
In fact, on a number of occasions a right mouse click on some information in the display would produce a pop-up box explaining exactly what some term or other actually meant. So there was no need for any manuals. The display could show delays, highlight response time problems, and the TCP window size.
Tony also showed me a piece of software that drew a diagram of a Sysplex Distributor – which shows the IP addresses and links on a mainframe system. The software also highlighted where there were issues. And, like the rest of the software we looked at, you could drill down to find exactly where any problem were. In fact, Tony was sure that this would allow customers to identify potential issues before their users did. Behind the scenes, information from netstat and other commands were being used to drive the display.
We talked about customers being able to build business service views of what was going on their system and how useful that would be for each of their customers. That kind of bespoke requirement wasn’t something that Tony could necessarily build into the software, but all it requires is a knowledge of REXX to make it happen. And most z/OS sites have at least one person who code in REXX.
Lastly, we talked about problem resolution when you have two or more systems that don’t seem to be talking to each other. Currently, you need to log into each system and run traces to find out which of the systems has the problem. Tony plans to implement a ‘grouptrace’ feature that allows the user to tell the software to run a trace on these two (or more) systems. The results will come back from both systems and be visible from the browser. The results will be displayed in timestamp order and it will be possible to see on which of the systems the problem is. As easy that.
Too often we’d be sunk without a trace facility. Now we have an example of a way to be able to use trace across multiple systems and simply click to drill down to identify the problem.
Sunday, 8 May 2011
Mainframe chatter
Mark Lillycrop, Director of Arcati Ltd, and I were asked to take part in CA’s May Mainframe Madness. We were part of a ‘Scheduled Chat’ in their ‘House of Mainframe’ section on 5 May. It was enjoyable chatting to other mainframe professionals and it was very interesting the direction the conversation took.
Clearly, there were two main strands to the conversation. One was the difficulty of convincing (converting?) non-mainframers of the potential of the mainframe. The second was the success of z/Linux at installations.
Looking at z/Linux success first, Murray Theriault told us: “I think what sold it for me was the idea that I could put up 100 z/Linux machines on the same box and have a very small footprint, not to mention no power costs”. Similarly, Marie Kennard added: “Same here – the app we’re putting onto zLinux currently runs on dozens of boxes, most of which are reaching EOL and needed replacing”. Someone else reminded the group about Aliantz in Australia, saying that they’d “flipped their whole farm to z/Linux in a weekend with little to no outtage”. This led CA’s Reg Harbeck to comment: “zLinux seems to be taking over a decade to become an overnight sucess...”
So it appears that z/Linux is making headway in those sites that already have a mainframe and Linux servers. And it’s definitely the case that the arguments for doing so are irrefutable. Moving some of the applications or even all of them from other Linux platforms is a positive step and the sites doing so are going to see huge benefits in terms of performance, reliability, and, of course, cost savings both in man-power and outages.
But even the success stories seem to be the result of a battle between mainframers and management whose model of computing and whose expectations are the result of using Microsoft Windows. A lot of the hour long discussion was spent on how to get managers in organizations that have mainframes to appreciate what they have, and to understand how to exploit the mainframes potential. The truth is that there’s an even bigger battle to be fought and that’s to get IT people and IT managers at non-mainframe sites to appreciate the opportunities that a mainframe brings.
During the discussion it was said that ‘good news’ mainframe stories don’t make much of an appearance in the IT press. If they did, that would be one way that people would get to hear about mainframes. Mark suggested that many people view mainframes as: “Old, expensive, and your dad’s technology”. And yet, anyone who takes money out of an ATM (hole-in-the-wall) machine is probably linking to IMS on a mainframe. They just don’t know it. The press were not only blamed for sins of omission, but also sins of commission – for printing the same old stories containing the same old wrong assumptions about mainframes.
I reminded the chat room about William Data Systems ZEN product family and how users can control their network from the latest iPad gizmo, or get reports on their smartphones about what’s going on on their network. And, obviously, there was a lot of talk about cloud computing and mainframes – and how they go together like “peas and carrots” (well Forest Gump would have said that if he’d been logged in!). The point is that mainframes aren’t “your dad’s technology”, they very much embrace the very latest technologies and do it in a way that is secure and comes with all the benefits of years of successful operation in banks and airlines, etc.
I did think to run a competition, at this point but I don’t have a prize to give out. However, I would be interested in hearing people’s ideas of how managers and staff at mainframe sites and the rest of the IT world who aren’t mainframers can be convinced of the importance and proven-reliability of mainframes. You can e-mail me at trevor@itech-ed.com with your comments and I’ll put them together in a future blog.
Other topics that we discussed during our hour included the importance of virtual meetings with the current financial constraints when organizations are less-and-less keen to fund travel/hotels/food etc for people to attend. We looked at green computing and how this issue will most-likely grow in importance with future regulation. The fact that the word ‘legacy’ is actually a compliment. (How many of you have printers that don’t work with Vista or Windows 7, and just have to live with it?) And we suggested names for the next version of z/OS including z/2020 and z/Cloud.
All-in-all it was an enjoyable ‘Scheduled Chat’ in the ‘House of Mainframe’. Good luck CA for the rest of the month of mainframe madness.
Clearly, there were two main strands to the conversation. One was the difficulty of convincing (converting?) non-mainframers of the potential of the mainframe. The second was the success of z/Linux at installations.
Looking at z/Linux success first, Murray Theriault told us: “I think what sold it for me was the idea that I could put up 100 z/Linux machines on the same box and have a very small footprint, not to mention no power costs”. Similarly, Marie Kennard added: “Same here – the app we’re putting onto zLinux currently runs on dozens of boxes, most of which are reaching EOL and needed replacing”. Someone else reminded the group about Aliantz in Australia, saying that they’d “flipped their whole farm to z/Linux in a weekend with little to no outtage”. This led CA’s Reg Harbeck to comment: “zLinux seems to be taking over a decade to become an overnight sucess...”
So it appears that z/Linux is making headway in those sites that already have a mainframe and Linux servers. And it’s definitely the case that the arguments for doing so are irrefutable. Moving some of the applications or even all of them from other Linux platforms is a positive step and the sites doing so are going to see huge benefits in terms of performance, reliability, and, of course, cost savings both in man-power and outages.
But even the success stories seem to be the result of a battle between mainframers and management whose model of computing and whose expectations are the result of using Microsoft Windows. A lot of the hour long discussion was spent on how to get managers in organizations that have mainframes to appreciate what they have, and to understand how to exploit the mainframes potential. The truth is that there’s an even bigger battle to be fought and that’s to get IT people and IT managers at non-mainframe sites to appreciate the opportunities that a mainframe brings.
During the discussion it was said that ‘good news’ mainframe stories don’t make much of an appearance in the IT press. If they did, that would be one way that people would get to hear about mainframes. Mark suggested that many people view mainframes as: “Old, expensive, and your dad’s technology”. And yet, anyone who takes money out of an ATM (hole-in-the-wall) machine is probably linking to IMS on a mainframe. They just don’t know it. The press were not only blamed for sins of omission, but also sins of commission – for printing the same old stories containing the same old wrong assumptions about mainframes.
I reminded the chat room about William Data Systems ZEN product family and how users can control their network from the latest iPad gizmo, or get reports on their smartphones about what’s going on on their network. And, obviously, there was a lot of talk about cloud computing and mainframes – and how they go together like “peas and carrots” (well Forest Gump would have said that if he’d been logged in!). The point is that mainframes aren’t “your dad’s technology”, they very much embrace the very latest technologies and do it in a way that is secure and comes with all the benefits of years of successful operation in banks and airlines, etc.
I did think to run a competition, at this point but I don’t have a prize to give out. However, I would be interested in hearing people’s ideas of how managers and staff at mainframe sites and the rest of the IT world who aren’t mainframers can be convinced of the importance and proven-reliability of mainframes. You can e-mail me at trevor@itech-ed.com with your comments and I’ll put them together in a future blog.
Other topics that we discussed during our hour included the importance of virtual meetings with the current financial constraints when organizations are less-and-less keen to fund travel/hotels/food etc for people to attend. We looked at green computing and how this issue will most-likely grow in importance with future regulation. The fact that the word ‘legacy’ is actually a compliment. (How many of you have printers that don’t work with Vista or Windows 7, and just have to live with it?) And we suggested names for the next version of z/OS including z/2020 and z/Cloud.
All-in-all it was an enjoyable ‘Scheduled Chat’ in the ‘House of Mainframe’. Good luck CA for the rest of the month of mainframe madness.
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Network management issues
I want to know what’s going on on my network – what do I do? Well this seemingly simple question has a complicated answer, which is historical and all to do with the separate worlds of the mainframes and everyone else coming together to give us our current complicated environment. Just to summarize, mainframes used SNA and VTAM to communicate and everyone else used TCP/IP. Sometime in the 1990s, all this came together. In addition, we now have people on iPads and smartphones using our networks – in fact, we can have people on iPads and smartphones controlling our networks!
So, in terms of software, what are our choices for network management?
IBM has Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for mainframe networks, which allows you to monitor VTAM and TCP/IP networks and identify problems within those networks.
CA has its CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP IP and CA NetMaster Network Management for SNA products, which allow users to “proactively manage” their network. And there are a number of other more specialized products including CA NSM NetMaster Option, which lets you “manage your mainframe networks from CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management”.
SDS has Vital Signs for IP and Vital Signs for VTAM, which are both monitoring software.
William Data Systems has a whole range of products including ZEN OSA MONITOR for OSA performance monitoring and management, ZEN IP MONITOR (IMPLEX) for IP performance monitoring and management, ZEN EE MONITOR (FERRET) for APPN/HPR and EE monitoring and management, ZEN TRACE and SOLVE (EXIGENCE) for network problem determination, ZEN FTP CONTROL (FTPALERT) for audited FTP monitoring and management, ZEN EE SECURITY (APIAS) for secure EE deployment across any network, and ZEN AUTOMATION for automating network and operational tasks.
In fact, William Data Systems has just release Version 4.7 of ZEN TRACE and SOLVE, which includes more customer-suggested z/OS network tracing and solution capabilities to help busy z/OS network support people do more in less time – they claim.
If you are plagued by mainframe network issues, you may well be interested in the new features they’ve incorporated into ZEN TRACE and SOLVE V4.7, including:
So, in terms of software, what are our choices for network management?
IBM has Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for mainframe networks, which allows you to monitor VTAM and TCP/IP networks and identify problems within those networks.
CA has its CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP IP and CA NetMaster Network Management for SNA products, which allow users to “proactively manage” their network. And there are a number of other more specialized products including CA NSM NetMaster Option, which lets you “manage your mainframe networks from CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management”.
SDS has Vital Signs for IP and Vital Signs for VTAM, which are both monitoring software.
William Data Systems has a whole range of products including ZEN OSA MONITOR for OSA performance monitoring and management, ZEN IP MONITOR (IMPLEX) for IP performance monitoring and management, ZEN EE MONITOR (FERRET) for APPN/HPR and EE monitoring and management, ZEN TRACE and SOLVE (EXIGENCE) for network problem determination, ZEN FTP CONTROL (FTPALERT) for audited FTP monitoring and management, ZEN EE SECURITY (APIAS) for secure EE deployment across any network, and ZEN AUTOMATION for automating network and operational tasks.
In fact, William Data Systems has just release Version 4.7 of ZEN TRACE and SOLVE, which includes more customer-suggested z/OS network tracing and solution capabilities to help busy z/OS network support people do more in less time – they claim.
If you are plagued by mainframe network issues, you may well be interested in the new features they’ve incorporated into ZEN TRACE and SOLVE V4.7, including:
- The new “Peek” function, which provides in-flight viewing of active IP traces. This means that it is now possible to view an active trace while it is still running, tracking its progress ‘in-flight', and then stopping it when the condition being sought in the trace is detected. This can save considerable CPU costs and user time.
- Traces originally captured in OSAENTA, libpcap, or Sniffer format can now be imported into ZTS. This can make network problem solving both faster and easier.
- As well as being able to accept commands from the operator console, ZEN TRACE and SOLVE now adds the ability to issue any commands (including ZTS commands) from JCL. When combined with the capabilities provided by the new import features, this enables different trace formats to be automatically imported into ZTS for analysis. This greatly simplifies the whole network problem solving process.
- Tracing of IPv6 is now faster and easier with the provision of improved Flow display text descriptions for recognizable packet contents, as well as the capability to search using IPv6 format addresses.
- Tracing packets in large Sysplex environments is inherently complex, but ZEN TRACE and SOLVE v4.7 now makes it easier by providing improved facilities for expanding encapsulated data used by Sysplex protocols such as GRE and VIPA Route. Being able to view and expand encapsulated payload data is a vital tool for rapid problem diagnosis in large Enterprise networks.
If you’re finding network management is an issue, it might well be worth a look.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Taking the tablets!
A few weeks ago I was talking about how William Data Systems had integrated their ZEN z/OS network management suite of products with iPhones and iPads and they’d also just included Blackberry and Android phones. I’d been particularly impressed how an iPad user had been able to identify where a problem was occurring and taken steps to rectify it. More recently, the iPad 2 has become available, and I thought it was definitely time to to investigate whether I ought to get myself a tablet device.
Now, I feel that I can argue a business case for using a tablet device. I need to browse the Internet when I’m at home, travelling, and with clients, and sometimes a phone just isn’t a big enough screen and a laptop is just too big and bulky to easily carry around. I also regularly need to browse Word documents – minutes of meetings, proposals, articles that I’m writing, etc etc. I also use Excel regularly – for all the things that you’d use a spreadsheet for. And I give presentations and talks that make PowerPoint a must-have – plus an easy way of connecting to a projector.
And, for me, that’s kind of the core usage – a big phone or a small laptop – it’s all down to form factor. A 10 inch book size device seems like the Goldilocks solution. But it has to be more capable than a gloried Netbook with widgets!
So let’s look at my nice-to-have list. It’s got to be fast. It’s got to have USB ports so I can swap files around easily. It’s obviously got to have wifi, and when I’m connected to the Internet I want access to Flash files (I really like those flipbooks rather than downloading and reading giant PDFs). I need it to play AVI files – my back catalogue of films etc would keep me amused while waiting at airports. And two built-in cameras facing opposite ways for Skyping and photographing whatever I can see.
I’d quite like an HDMI port so I can connect to a TV. I’d like a music playing app – like media player. I’d also like something like Dreamweaver so I can work on Web sites, and something like Photoshop so I can edit images. And possibly something like InDesign so I can produce newsletters etc. And I’ll need a firewall and antivirus software.
So, that seems to mean that an Android tablet is probably out and a PC-style tablet is what I want.
Now, the cost of devices varies in different countries, but I’ll give you the UK prices. An iPad 2 with wifi starts at just under £400. The Motorola Xoom is going to be £499. It has HDMI, 32GB of storage (plus an SD card slot), and twin cameras. The Advent Vega is £249.99, but that still uses Android 2.2 not 3.0 (Honeycomb). There’s a 10 inch Dell Streak coming. The Asus EeePad Transformer comes with a mini-HDMI port at £380. And Toshiba has an intereting-looking Android 3 tablet coming soon.
For PC-based tablets, Amazon has a 10.2" Windows 7 Tablet PC with 1.3MP Webcam, G-Sensor, HDMI Port, 3x USB2.0 ports for just under £300. The Zoostorm 3310-9500 SL8 is priced at just under £500. The Asus Eee Slate, which comes with just about everything you could want costs nearly a thousand pounds.
And that’s really the problem. Anything meeting my wish list is extremely expensive, and anything else seems little more than a glorified boy’s toy! It seems that unless I get my hands on something that’s so impressive I’m prepared to pay the extra money, for the moment I will bide my time and see what comes available as we move into the summer. Prices are bound to drop and performance is bound to increase. Don’t you think?
Now, I feel that I can argue a business case for using a tablet device. I need to browse the Internet when I’m at home, travelling, and with clients, and sometimes a phone just isn’t a big enough screen and a laptop is just too big and bulky to easily carry around. I also regularly need to browse Word documents – minutes of meetings, proposals, articles that I’m writing, etc etc. I also use Excel regularly – for all the things that you’d use a spreadsheet for. And I give presentations and talks that make PowerPoint a must-have – plus an easy way of connecting to a projector.
And, for me, that’s kind of the core usage – a big phone or a small laptop – it’s all down to form factor. A 10 inch book size device seems like the Goldilocks solution. But it has to be more capable than a gloried Netbook with widgets!
So let’s look at my nice-to-have list. It’s got to be fast. It’s got to have USB ports so I can swap files around easily. It’s obviously got to have wifi, and when I’m connected to the Internet I want access to Flash files (I really like those flipbooks rather than downloading and reading giant PDFs). I need it to play AVI files – my back catalogue of films etc would keep me amused while waiting at airports. And two built-in cameras facing opposite ways for Skyping and photographing whatever I can see.
I’d quite like an HDMI port so I can connect to a TV. I’d like a music playing app – like media player. I’d also like something like Dreamweaver so I can work on Web sites, and something like Photoshop so I can edit images. And possibly something like InDesign so I can produce newsletters etc. And I’ll need a firewall and antivirus software.
So, that seems to mean that an Android tablet is probably out and a PC-style tablet is what I want.
Now, the cost of devices varies in different countries, but I’ll give you the UK prices. An iPad 2 with wifi starts at just under £400. The Motorola Xoom is going to be £499. It has HDMI, 32GB of storage (plus an SD card slot), and twin cameras. The Advent Vega is £249.99, but that still uses Android 2.2 not 3.0 (Honeycomb). There’s a 10 inch Dell Streak coming. The Asus EeePad Transformer comes with a mini-HDMI port at £380. And Toshiba has an intereting-looking Android 3 tablet coming soon.
For PC-based tablets, Amazon has a 10.2" Windows 7 Tablet PC with 1.3MP Webcam, G-Sensor, HDMI Port, 3x USB2.0 ports for just under £300. The Zoostorm 3310-9500 SL8 is priced at just under £500. The Asus Eee Slate, which comes with just about everything you could want costs nearly a thousand pounds.
And that’s really the problem. Anything meeting my wish list is extremely expensive, and anything else seems little more than a glorified boy’s toy! It seems that unless I get my hands on something that’s so impressive I’m prepared to pay the extra money, for the moment I will bide my time and see what comes available as we move into the summer. Prices are bound to drop and performance is bound to increase. Don’t you think?
Sunday, 27 February 2011
Blending mainframe technology with Apple, Blackberry, and Android – makes you think!
I don’t know whether you’re going to be at the SHARE conference in Anaheim (California) from 27 February to 4 March, but one of the interesting things to see is the William Data Systems stand (booth 211).
They are showing how their ZEN z/OS network management suite of product integrates with popular smart phone technology – Apple, Blackberry, and Android. What you’ll see is ZEN monitoring z/OS networks and then reporting the results to a mobile device. The user can then evaluate what’s happening on the mainframe and take appropriate action immediately. As a consequence, z/OS support staff can get on with their lives and be out and about, but still be able to monitor their mainframes and react to alerts.
The company say that this mobile technology extends ZEN’s whistle-blower ability to monitor SyslogD, filter the results by many criteria, launch automation commands or REXX procedures, and transmit the important alerts to mobile devices, all in real-time. I think this sounds pretty impressive and I was lucky enough to have a demonstration of the technology a few ago.
Originally the technology was restricted to iPhone and iPad users, but now it’s extended to the other ‘smart’ technologies that organizations use.
Their press release mentions SyslogD. In fact, this is probably the most useful resource that many IT departments ignore or only refer to long after they should. Having this kind of information on your phone seems almost futuristic.
Anyway, if you are at Anaheim, take a look.
On a completely different topic… I was pleased to receive the following e-mail during the week:
“On behalf of IBM, it is with great pleasure to recognize you as a 2011 IBM Information Champion. We would like to thank you for your leadership and contributions to the Data Management community. You continue to be among a very small group to be chosen for this recognition. Congratulations.”
This makes three years in a row.
If you’re interested, you can find out more about the Information Champion programme here (www-01.ibm.com/software/data/champion/)
They are showing how their ZEN z/OS network management suite of product integrates with popular smart phone technology – Apple, Blackberry, and Android. What you’ll see is ZEN monitoring z/OS networks and then reporting the results to a mobile device. The user can then evaluate what’s happening on the mainframe and take appropriate action immediately. As a consequence, z/OS support staff can get on with their lives and be out and about, but still be able to monitor their mainframes and react to alerts.
The company say that this mobile technology extends ZEN’s whistle-blower ability to monitor SyslogD, filter the results by many criteria, launch automation commands or REXX procedures, and transmit the important alerts to mobile devices, all in real-time. I think this sounds pretty impressive and I was lucky enough to have a demonstration of the technology a few ago.
Originally the technology was restricted to iPhone and iPad users, but now it’s extended to the other ‘smart’ technologies that organizations use.
Their press release mentions SyslogD. In fact, this is probably the most useful resource that many IT departments ignore or only refer to long after they should. Having this kind of information on your phone seems almost futuristic.
Anyway, if you are at Anaheim, take a look.
On a completely different topic… I was pleased to receive the following e-mail during the week:
“On behalf of IBM, it is with great pleasure to recognize you as a 2011 IBM Information Champion. We would like to thank you for your leadership and contributions to the Data Management community. You continue to be among a very small group to be chosen for this recognition. Congratulations.”
This makes three years in a row.
If you’re interested, you can find out more about the Information Champion programme here (www-01.ibm.com/software/data/champion/)
Sunday, 10 October 2010
Managing mainframes from your phone
William Data Systems has come up with a clever way of managing your mainframe network from an iPhone. Now as soon as you see the word iPhone, you probably think it’s an app and you’re going to have to get all your users synchronizing with iTunes before they can use it or update it. The truth is, it’s a much cleverer idea than that!
Let’s start at the beginning, WDS (William Data Systems) has a z/OS network management suite called ZEN, which has a number of really useful components that you can find out more about from their Web site (www.willdata.com). Their customers wanted an easy way to keep up-to-date with what was happening with their networks. And one thing everyone has these days is a mobile (cell) phone – so why not come up with a way of monitoring the network from your phone?
What WDS did, was to utilize the browser on iPhones – Safari, the same one that comes as standard on Macs – and allow users to monitor and manage their mainframe networks from there.
Now because Safari is an integral part of the iPhone, the technology works for all iPhone users. As I said at the beginning, there’s no problem of resynchronizing every user by getting them to plug their phones into iTunes. There’s no fuss about accessing the App Store. It’s all there on the browser.
As more-and-more companies are asking for z/OS network monitoring and management to be done remotely when needed using a single mobile device that support people would be carrying with them, this solution seems to tick all the boxes. If a problem is found, then the techie can find a laptop and fix it, or use the phone to call the service centre and get someone there to fix it. Either way, the problem is solved, perhaps before users have begun to notice. Interestingly, the solution can be used from an iPad. In that case, the screen is big enough for a techie to actually use instead of a laptop – and solve the problem immediately.
What if your organization doesn’t use iPhones? What if you’ve rolled out Blackberrys? Well in that case, WDS has a solution available. If your organization uses Symbian or Android (or anything else), then WDS are developing a solution for your smart phone right now.
It may all seems like something from a 1990s sci fi film, but monitoring your z/OS network from your mobile phone is a solution that’s available now.
And finally, as a mainframe professional, I am hoping that you will be willing to complete the annual user survey at www.arcati.com/usersurvey11. If the company you work for is a vendor, consultant, or service provider, then please ensure their information is included in the vendor information form at www.arcati.com/vendorentry.
Let’s start at the beginning, WDS (William Data Systems) has a z/OS network management suite called ZEN, which has a number of really useful components that you can find out more about from their Web site (www.willdata.com). Their customers wanted an easy way to keep up-to-date with what was happening with their networks. And one thing everyone has these days is a mobile (cell) phone – so why not come up with a way of monitoring the network from your phone?
What WDS did, was to utilize the browser on iPhones – Safari, the same one that comes as standard on Macs – and allow users to monitor and manage their mainframe networks from there.
Now because Safari is an integral part of the iPhone, the technology works for all iPhone users. As I said at the beginning, there’s no problem of resynchronizing every user by getting them to plug their phones into iTunes. There’s no fuss about accessing the App Store. It’s all there on the browser.
As more-and-more companies are asking for z/OS network monitoring and management to be done remotely when needed using a single mobile device that support people would be carrying with them, this solution seems to tick all the boxes. If a problem is found, then the techie can find a laptop and fix it, or use the phone to call the service centre and get someone there to fix it. Either way, the problem is solved, perhaps before users have begun to notice. Interestingly, the solution can be used from an iPad. In that case, the screen is big enough for a techie to actually use instead of a laptop – and solve the problem immediately.
What if your organization doesn’t use iPhones? What if you’ve rolled out Blackberrys? Well in that case, WDS has a solution available. If your organization uses Symbian or Android (or anything else), then WDS are developing a solution for your smart phone right now.
It may all seems like something from a 1990s sci fi film, but monitoring your z/OS network from your mobile phone is a solution that’s available now.
And finally, as a mainframe professional, I am hoping that you will be willing to complete the annual user survey at www.arcati.com/usersurvey11. If the company you work for is a vendor, consultant, or service provider, then please ensure their information is included in the vendor information form at www.arcati.com/vendorentry.
Monday, 30 August 2010
Getting your money’s worth
If you’re looking for value for money, then you can’t do much better than attend the 9th annual UK 2010 Guide Share Europe Conference to be held on 2 and 3 November at Whittlebury Hall, Northamptonshire – if you’re using your sat nav, it’s NN12 8QH. This will be the largest UK GSE conference in their history and boasts 13 streams on the Tuesday and a whopping 14 streams on the Wednesday. You can get more information at www.gse.org.uk/tyc/Email01.html. Registration is now open.
Secondly, there’s now a Version 2.0 available of ZEN, the cost saving z/OS network management suite from William Data Systems. This new version includes enhancements that enable many more companies running z/OS to improve on and completely replace NetView or NetMaster. WDS claims that for some customers, managing networks with ZEN has reduced their annual cost of ownership by as much as 50%. ZEN customers pay for only the functionality they need, which reduces annual costs compared with users of other products who pay for functionality that they don’t use.
ZEN V2’s new Automation component includes a full REXX function pack. This provides facilities for users to totally automate their management of z/OS network environments and create customized ZEN displays and alerts.
ZEN provides a browser interface that is intuitive and customizable to individual user’s needs. ZEN also provides “green screens”, which more traditional users continue to benefit from. You can find out more at www.willdata.com.
And if you want something that’s absolutely free… you can find a summary of my recent interview with Stephen Ibaraki from the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) at stephenibaraki.com/cips/v610/trevor_eddolls_2010.html. And if that whets your appetite, you can listen to the complete podcast at www.stephenibaraki.com/audio/Trevor_Eddolls_2010.mp3.
Secondly, there’s now a Version 2.0 available of ZEN, the cost saving z/OS network management suite from William Data Systems. This new version includes enhancements that enable many more companies running z/OS to improve on and completely replace NetView or NetMaster. WDS claims that for some customers, managing networks with ZEN has reduced their annual cost of ownership by as much as 50%. ZEN customers pay for only the functionality they need, which reduces annual costs compared with users of other products who pay for functionality that they don’t use.
ZEN V2’s new Automation component includes a full REXX function pack. This provides facilities for users to totally automate their management of z/OS network environments and create customized ZEN displays and alerts.
ZEN provides a browser interface that is intuitive and customizable to individual user’s needs. ZEN also provides “green screens”, which more traditional users continue to benefit from. You can find out more at www.willdata.com.
And if you want something that’s absolutely free… you can find a summary of my recent interview with Stephen Ibaraki from the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) at stephenibaraki.com/cips/v610/trevor_eddolls_2010.html. And if that whets your appetite, you can listen to the complete podcast at www.stephenibaraki.com/audio/Trevor_Eddolls_2010.mp3.
Sunday, 7 March 2010
What's going on - on my Open Systems Adapter?
An Open Systems Adapter (OSA) is a network controller between mainframes and other computing platforms. An OSA supports Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI (Fibre Distributed Data Interface) connectivity, and can offer data throughput speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. An OSA provides a way of attaching a LAN (Local Area Network) to a mainframe, or looking at it the other way round, it provides a way of connecting a mainframe to a LAN! Either way, it makes it a very crucial piece of kit.
At most installations, life isn't quite so simplistic. For example, a single OSA can be shared across several LPARs and/or IP stacks. It can handle multiple channels and multiple types and instances of ports. And the consequence of this is its ability to support a very large number of users.
You'd think this kind of complexity would make the OSA a device that is monitored by every site that's got one. After all, what would happen were it to suddenly stop working? But the complexity doesn't stop there. An OSA exists as a z/OS device, a VTAM device, an IP interface, and an SNMP device. And it's this level of complexity that makes the collection of data so tricky. There's not even some low-level tool providing a single query that will reveal how an OSA is performing.
In truth, OSAs are resilient, managing to recover and log any non-fatal errors encountered in an internal Management Information Base (MIB). The MIB is a database containing information about the current OSA set-up and state information. Getting information out of the MIB is only possible with low-level tools and a good knowledge of the associated MIB structures. An OSA MIB may well contain many thousands of separate fields identified by Object Id and an Index relating them to a specific LPAR, channel, or port. Additional information about an OSA can be found in z/OS device tables, IP stacks, and VTAM control blocks.
Perhaps surprisingly, many sites feel that an IP monitor is probably all that's needed to keep an eye on their OSA. However, a new alternative is ZEN OSA Monitor (ZOM) from William Data Systems (www.willdata.com). ZOM provides users with the ability to get a health check of their OSA, and it also provides a soft reset feature. According to the WDS Web site: "ZOM dynamically detects any status changes or increases in error counts, with all such changes summarized in easy-to-read panels in ZEN, with full alerting and reporting capabilities. A simple but effective system of traffic lights highlight any changes to reference values, ensuring these critical devices are maintained at optimal performance levels."
Some readers may be familiar William Data Systems ZEN EE (Enterprise Extender) Monitor, codenamed Ferret.
With ZOM, the OSA dashboard provides an at-a-glance list of a user's monitored OSAs with an indication of current usage and status. Several fields contain drill-down links to further, more detailed displays.
With OSA devices playing such a critical role in the communication between mainframes and the rest of the computing environment, it would make sense to utilize a product that's able to access important performance data and display it in an easily digestible format. Anyway, they're not paying me to sell their product for them, but I thought readers of this blog would find the existence of this software well worth knowing about.
At most installations, life isn't quite so simplistic. For example, a single OSA can be shared across several LPARs and/or IP stacks. It can handle multiple channels and multiple types and instances of ports. And the consequence of this is its ability to support a very large number of users.
You'd think this kind of complexity would make the OSA a device that is monitored by every site that's got one. After all, what would happen were it to suddenly stop working? But the complexity doesn't stop there. An OSA exists as a z/OS device, a VTAM device, an IP interface, and an SNMP device. And it's this level of complexity that makes the collection of data so tricky. There's not even some low-level tool providing a single query that will reveal how an OSA is performing.
In truth, OSAs are resilient, managing to recover and log any non-fatal errors encountered in an internal Management Information Base (MIB). The MIB is a database containing information about the current OSA set-up and state information. Getting information out of the MIB is only possible with low-level tools and a good knowledge of the associated MIB structures. An OSA MIB may well contain many thousands of separate fields identified by Object Id and an Index relating them to a specific LPAR, channel, or port. Additional information about an OSA can be found in z/OS device tables, IP stacks, and VTAM control blocks.
Perhaps surprisingly, many sites feel that an IP monitor is probably all that's needed to keep an eye on their OSA. However, a new alternative is ZEN OSA Monitor (ZOM) from William Data Systems (www.willdata.com). ZOM provides users with the ability to get a health check of their OSA, and it also provides a soft reset feature. According to the WDS Web site: "ZOM dynamically detects any status changes or increases in error counts, with all such changes summarized in easy-to-read panels in ZEN, with full alerting and reporting capabilities. A simple but effective system of traffic lights highlight any changes to reference values, ensuring these critical devices are maintained at optimal performance levels."
Some readers may be familiar William Data Systems ZEN EE (Enterprise Extender) Monitor, codenamed Ferret.
With ZOM, the OSA dashboard provides an at-a-glance list of a user's monitored OSAs with an indication of current usage and status. Several fields contain drill-down links to further, more detailed displays.
With OSA devices playing such a critical role in the communication between mainframes and the rest of the computing environment, it would make sense to utilize a product that's able to access important performance data and display it in an easily digestible format. Anyway, they're not paying me to sell their product for them, but I thought readers of this blog would find the existence of this software well worth knowing about.
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