The majprity of customers have significant potential for reducing resource consumption through tuning. This is especially true for those with older applications that haven’t been actively maintained for a while or who have lost some of their deep DB2 skills through retirement or redundancy.
By implementing key tuning procedures, ongoing software costs can be reduced and mainframe upgrades deferred. In addition, application performance will be enhanced and overall TCO reduced.
Tuning Challenges
One of the major challenges in any environment, but particularly with client/server applications, is determining which component is responsible for poor response times, although the tools for this are improving. I often liken this to the classic board game of “Cluedo”; one has to logically and methodically eliminate potential culprits until you’re left with the guilty party! Another related challenge is “skills silos”, where a client has the individual skills necessary to resolve a particular issue but no single person has the whole picture and internal culture and/or politics prevent the individuals from communicating and collaborating effectively.
The growing trend towards DB2 workloads running on ERP applications such as SAP and Siebel is also bringing some very different challenges to more traditional workloads.
In recent years the Financial Services industry in particular has been hit hard by audit and compliance regulations. When adding audit trails to existing applications it is very easy to increase the path-length of some transactions by up to 30%. It is critical therefore that these changes are properly designed and implemented to minimise the performance impact.
Performance Culture
It is vital that organisations recognise the business value of designing applications for performance from the outset. The best way to ensure this happens is to instil a “Performance Culture” throughout the organisation. This includes ensuring the availability of good skills and expert advice from the beginning of the application development life cycle, formalised design reviews to validate anticipated performance against requirements and a proactive monitoring and tuning strategy once the application goes live.
The benefits of DB2 mainframe tuning can be felt across the entire business. From the CFO, who will see significant reduction in IT spend, through to the IT teams, who benefit from improved application performance and thus improved customer service, a thorough tuning exercise can indeed improve business performance.
We’re delighted to announce that for a limited period we will be offering free DB2 for LUW health checks to UK DB2 customers. This services will involve one of our DB2 experts spending the day “getting under the covers” of your DB2 systemsto look at the following:
Database server capacity
Database software
Instance & database configuration
Housekeeping
Back-up and recovery
Data placement
Performance monitoring
Logging configuration
Bufferpool configuration
You will then receive a summary of findings outlining any areas for improvement with expected benefits and estimates of the associated effort involved.
Email us today if you would like to take advantage of this amazing offer - laura.hood@triton.co.uk
January 26, 2010, 11 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, 4:00 p.m. UTC
Learn about the wealth of new features in DB2 9 for z/OS! Join this free teleconference from IBM and you will see how it’s new features improve business efficiency and reduce costs by increasing the productivity of administrators and programmers. In the presentation you will see how some of the common database administration and programming tasks can be done more efficiently in DB2 9. There will also be hints and tips about less obvious usage capabilities of selected DB2 9 features that solve some long-standing programming challenges that impact resources such as application controlled locking, destructive reads, efficient mass deletes and more.
In this session IBM will:
Explain the rationale behind implementing selected DB2 9 features
Provide usage recommendations for optimal exploitation of new functions
Describe less-known techniques to address specific programming tasks
Pinpoint areas where DB2 administrators and programmers can exploit the full power of DB29
Highlight areas likely to improve efficiency and productitivty of DB2 administrators and programmers
Speaker - Namik Hrle, IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Software Group, Information Management
If you’re looking to upgrade to DB2 z/OS version 9 or already have but want to get more from your investment then book some time in your diary to attend these upcoming IBM Webcast events:
Hints and tips to get the most out of IBM DB2 9 for z/OS - click here to register.
Join this complimentary teleconference and learn about the wealth of new features in DB2 9 for z/OS. You’ll see how its new features improve business efficiency and reduce costs by increasing the productivity of administrators and programmers.
Looking to Upgrade to DB2 9 for z/OS and improve productivity & reduce costs? Hear directly from one of our customers - UK Land Registry! - click here to register.
Listen to how Land Registry, a UK Government organization successfully upgraded to DB2 9 and is reaping the business benefits. This presentation will take you through the journey from start to finish, highlighting the risk-mitigating activities that were undertaken during the project lifecycle that contributed to a virtually impact free migration.
Look out for “Confessions of a DB2 Geek” in the new year! This program of podcasts, webcasts and articles is designed for DB2 LUW users to get access to the latest news and technical updates. It also gives our very own self confessed DB2 Geeks the chance to share with you their expertise and experience.
The first instalment will be about DB2 pureScale. Look out for more information coming soon….
