Triton Consulting

Last week IBM unveiled their latest mainframe – the IBM zEnterprise System.

According to the official launch site the zEnterprise brings:

• The industry’s fastest enterprise system.  Delivering 50 BIPS, zEnterprise is ideal for large-scale data and transaction serving and mission critical enterpris applications.
• Unified management for multi-platform environments.  Unified Resource Manager, part of the IBM System Director family, is an integrated System z management facility responsible for zEnterprise platform management.
• Customer choice of workload optimisation systems.  Run on the system besst suited for each appllication – AIX on IBM Power7 Blaed or Linux System x Blaed, all managed by zEnterprise.  Workload-specific optimisers can accelerate time to insight and reduce costs.
• Predictable service delviery. zEnterpruse is built on best-in-class systems and software technologies.  It’s a system of systems that unifies for rapid, predictable service delivery.

For more info visit http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/news/announcement/20100722_annc.html?lnk=zlhp1

As always, the answer to this is “it depends”! However, here are some basic rules of thumb that you may find useful:

• Define an application environment specifically for your Java stored procedures. This should have NUMTCB set to a relatively low value (6-8 is good) as Java stored procedures typically require a lot of storage. Java SPs also have their own JCL DD statement requirements, such as entries for JAVAENV and JSPDEBUG.
• Define another environment specifically for your REXX stored procedures. Only a single REXX SP can run in any given application environment at any one time, so you need to set NUMTCB=1 for these.
• Define an application environment specifically for stored procedures that need to run under RACF program control (some of the IBM-supplied SPs fall into this category, such as DSNACCUC). These SPs need their own environment: if you try to execute both program-controlled and non program-controlled SPs in the same environment you’ll receive message ICH420I and the controlled SPs will fail.
• Define an application environment to host all of the IBM-supplied stored procedures that don’t fall into one of the above categories.
• Define 1-n environments for your “normal” COBOL, PL/1, C or SQL stored procedures. NUMTCB for these can typically be set fairly high (40-50 isn’t uncommon).
• Finally, you may want to consider having one or more test environments for your normal procedures, but with NUMTCB=1. This forces procedures to be run individually, which can be very useful during debugging when your procedure writes messages to address space log. Failing to do this can result in several procedures interleaving their debug messages, which can get very confusing. A simple ALTER PROCEDURE statement is all that is required to change the application environment, but don’t forget to stop/start the procedure afterwards.

Fast, automated DB2 cloning and refresh operations to boost results

17th November 4pm UTC

There are many reasons to clone DB2 systems and refresh table spaces; create test environments, stage data-warehouse loads and offload business processed from production to other environments.  Traditional methods are time-consuming, use large amounts of host processing resources and, when copying DB2 systems, require a separate LPAR to house the copy.  Because manual effort is required to research and clone data, you risk impacting your systems availability.

Today’s storage-based fast replication technologies provide services to copy DB2 data instantaneously and without using host CPU or I/O resources.  Join us for this complimentary teleconference and learn how the IBM DB2 Cloning Tool for z/OS copies entire DB2 systems within the same or shared LPAR using storage-based fast replication and how volume identifiers and DB2 metadata are managed to allow the data to be used quickly by a cloned DB2 system.

This in-depth look at the DB2 cloning Tool for z/OS will also cover how the product:

• Automatically translates the object IDs that differ between source and target subsystems
• Quickly clones DB2 subsystems, DB2 table spaces or index spaces to create up-to-date test environments
• Clones a DB2 subsystem by renaming and cataloging the data sets, fixing the volume internals and updating the DB2 internal control information

November 3rd 4pm UTC 

Join IBM for this complimentary teleconference and learn what’s coming in DB2 X for z/OS to support your staff and your business.  database administrators will find improvements in databse performance, scalability and availability, with many tasks simplified.  Memory management has been dramatically reduced, making growth a much simpler process.  DBAs will also get more flexible security to help with regulatory compliance.  A wide range of enhancements improve ERP application and data warehouse functionality and performance.  The second releease of pureXML serves application developers with improvements the SQL and XML interface to access XML data stored in a anative format.

Major enhancements for discussion include:

• Ease of porting across multiple platforms with improved SQL and data definition compatability with other DB2 platforms.
• Improvements in large object performance and flexibility
• Near-linea scalability for mission critical SAP, ERP and CRM requirements
• New XML helps minimize the time and effort it takes to persist and use XML data

Speaker: Jeff Jotsen, Distinguished Endineer, DB2 for z/OS Development

Click here to book

DB2 for z/OS data sharing is well-acknowledged by industry experts for providing the highest availability, and addressing planned and unplanned outages. Nevertheless, end-users only care that their task is executed. If the application server cannot reach out to the database server even when the database server is up and running – there is no execution. Join IBM for this complimentary teleconference as they walk through the step-by-step process to set up a distributed application environment accessing a DB2 data sharing group for high availability. There will discuss frequently asked questions, especially those related to Parallel Sysplex® workload balancing and connection concentration.

You’ll come away with a good understanding of how to:

Achieve continuous service availability
Reap more benefit from your existing Parallel Sysplex and data sharing investments
Route workloads dynamically to the images in the Parallel Sysplex that have the most capacity or best throughput

Speaker:
Maryela Weihrauch, IBM Distinguish Engineer, DB2 for z

Register Now

Julian Stuhler will be presenting “The business value of migrating to DB2 9″ at the upcoming DB2 Technology Update events.

South Bank, London on 29th September and Edinburgh 1st October

For more info and to book click here

Possible data loss for z/OS 1.8, 1.9 and 1.10 with fix and HSM PATCH enabled for OA22507.

Check the zSeries Red Alerts Subscription Service for more info - http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/redAlerts/20090824.html

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/db2zos/red-alert-possible-data-loss-33674?rss=1

Book your place today!

23rd September 2009

Virtual doors open at 10:30 a.m. EDT on Sept. 23, 2009, and will remain open through the duration of the virtual tradeshow.

Agenda
10:30 a.m. Registration, Visit the Exhibit Hall and Resource Center
11:00 a.m. Keynote Session – System z Software Technology Update
Ray Jones, Vice President, Worldwide System z Software Sales, IBM Software Group
12:00 p.m. General Sessions and Chat Sessions

Replay of the webcast now available - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/telecon/aug4/index.html

Topics include the six core areas that make up the 12 PCI DSS standard requirements:

• Building and maintaining a secure network using System z integrity features
• Protecting cardholder data with an encryption infrastructure
• Maintaining vulnerability management with z/OS agents and services
• Implementing strong control measures across security layers
• Monitoring and testing networks on a regular basis
• Maintaining an information security policy, including certifications

IBM are running a complimentary webcast and learn how IBM data governance and its entry points can help optimize your business by helping to lower costs, manage risk and increase your profitability – while creating deeper business insight, enabling business growth and competitive advantage.

This webcast will focus on these three key data governance disciplines as a way of achieving better business outcomes:

• Information quality as a means of better understanding the customer and creating more up-sell opportunities
• Lifecycle management of your information from capture to archive and deletion
• Information protection inside and outside of the organization, and how to help lower risk and stay compliant.

There will be a live q&a session after the webcast.

Contact us to book

Don’t for get our live events in London & Edinburgh – Data Governance on System z