IBM Operating System Announcements

There had been some previews of e.g. z/OS 1.10 and z/VSE 4.2, but here are the actual announcements of the new releases of the three operating systems. As the announcements were already made 2 weeks ago, I'm just going to give you a quick update summary.

First we have z/OS V1.10 : 'IBM z/OS V1.10 offers new scalability, performance, availability, economics, and solutions for enterprise information' (ZP08-0337).
Some of the new capabilities :

• Storage scalability. Extended Address Volumes (EAVs) enable you to define volumes as large as 223 GB
• Application and data serving scalability. Up to 64 engines, up to 1.5 TB per server with up to 1.0 TB of real memory per LPAR, and support for large (1 MB) pages on the z10 EC.
• Low-cost, high-availability disk solution. The Basic HyperSwap capability (enabled by TotalStorage® Productivity Center for Replication Basic Edition for System z)
• Improved management of temporary processor capacity. A new Capacity Provisioning Manager available on z/OS V1.10, and available on z/OS V1.9 with PTF UA39307, can monitor z/OS systems on z10 EC servers. Activation and deactivation of temporary capacity can be suggested or performed automatically based on user-defined schedules and workload criteria.
• Improved productivity. z/OS V1.10 provides improvements in or new capabilities for: simplifying diagnosis and problem determination; expanded Health Check Services; network and security management; automatic dump and re-IPL capability; as well as overall z/OS, I/O configuration, sysplex, and storage operations.

Planned availability is September 26, 2008. Take care : if you're still on z/OS 1.7, be sure to order z/OS 1.9 before it's too late, because you cannot go from z/OS 1.7 to z/OS 1.10. And if you're not migrating before september there's a Lifecycle Extension Announcement for z/OS 1.7 (ZA08-0162). It's a fee-based offering providing a corrective service for up to 2 years starting with October 1, 2008.


Then there's z/VM V5.4 : 'IBM z/VM V5.4 - Extending virtualization technology for System z' (ZP08-0349).
The highlights :

• Increased flexibility with support for new z/VM-mode logical partitions
• Enhanced physical connectivity by exploiting all OSA-Express3 ports
• Usability enhancements for network management
• Creation of LDAP change log entries by the RACF® Security Server to update RACF group and user profiles
• Dynamic addition of memory to an active z/VM LPAR by exploiting the System z^tm dynamic-storage-reconfiguration capabilities
• Capability to install Linux® on System z from the HMC on a System z10 without requiring an external network setup
• Enhancements for scalability and constraint relief
• Operation of the SSL server in a CMS environment
• Systems management enhancements for Linux and other virtual images

Planned availability is September 12, 2008.


Finally there's z/VSE V4.2 : 'IBM z/VSE Version 4 Release 2 is generally available to help enable growth' (ZP08-0350).
The highlights :

• Scalability enhancements
  • Up to 512 VSE tasks (two times the 255 limit in z/VSE V4.1)
  • Up to 32 GB of processor storage (four times the 8 GB supported by z/VSE V4.1)
  • Parallel Access Volume (PAV) feature of IBM System Storage DS8000 and DS6000 series
• Security enhancements
  • Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) sign-on support using a new z/VSE LDAP client
  • IBM System z10 extensions to CP Assist for Cryptographic Function (CPACF)
  • IBM System Storage TS1120 're-keying' function
  • Basic Security Manager (BSM) improvements
  • Encryption Facility for z/VSE V1.1 as an optional priced feature
• Enhanced storage options
  • IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) access to FCP-attached SCSI disks
  • IBM System Storage TS3400 Tape Library and TS7700 Virtualization Engine^tm Release 1.4

Planned availability is October 17, 2008.

As I've already said, there have been lots of announcements in August, so I'll be back with some other in one of my next posts.