Sampling Techdocs : December 2008 - January 2009

Hello, here we go again for another round of interesting material from TechDocs.

• Technical Document : z/OS Positioning Software for the z10 EC and z10 BC Servers
  This is kind of a classic. It gives you lots of information on supported Operating Systems, migration, new functions like zHPF, PSP Buckets. It also indicates what's supported by which z/OS release plus a lot of other information.
  
  
• White Paper : IBM® Virtualization Engine TS7700 Series Best Practices - Cache Management in the TS7720 V1.1
  The disk-only Virtualization Engine (TS7720) was announced last year and here's a document that "details the monitoring of cache usage, messages and attentions presented as the cache approaches the full state, consequences of reaching the full state and the methods used for managing the amount of data stored in the cache".
  
  
• White Paper : Energy Management and Performance Analysis on the IBM System z10 BC
  "This paper will demonstrate the new IBM System z10 Business Class (z10 BC) as an excellent system for power efficiency and performance, discuss energy management strategies, highlight the Active Energy Manager tool, and provide an analysis of energy and performance on the IBM System z10 BC". It also talks about the Power Estimation Tool and the System Activity Display.
  
  
• White Paper : OSA-Express3 Multi-ports per CHPID Definitions
  Here's a useful document on how to define your OSA-Express3 cards.
  
  
• Technical Document : IBM Supported Platforms for Oracle Database
  This might save you some searching : System z is included. Or you may want to take a look over here too.
  
  
• FAQ : zHPF FAQ Frequently Asked Question
  The document first lines out the diference between ESCON and FICON, then explains MIDAW but the focus is of course on zHPF.
  
  
• FAQ : Virtualization Engine TS7700 Frequently Asked Question
  This document describes "Which TS7700 Virtualization Engine functions became available in which Code Releases and which LM code is co-reqed?"

Well that's it for now. As I always say : just check them out !

IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager Trial

Last week IBM announced a new release of IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager for Linux on System z V4.1, an IBM Systems Director plug-in (ZG08-0512). Here's the overview from the announcement :

"IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager V4.1 software, an IBM Systems Director plug-in, is available on Linux on Power, Linux on System x, Linux on System z, AIX, and Microsoft Windows to help you monitor and manage the power and thermal usage of your IT environment. AEM is a unique energy management software tool that can provide a single view of the actual power usage across systems in your infrastructure as opposed to the benchmarked power consumption.

The main new features in this release are:

• Web-based user interface requiring only a browser
• Soft power capping
• Energy thresholding
• Group capping
• Integration with Emerson-Liebert's SiteScan management application
• Additional power savings modes
• Support for non-IBM hardware (PDU and UPS) as documented in the product library
• Command-line interface support"

There's also a IBM web page on IBM Systems Director and one specific page on the Active Energy Manager. And now here's the interesting part of that page : it mentions a 60-day trial of Active Energy Manager.

"Take the opportunity to see for yourself for 60 days how this solution will enable you to identify, monitor, measure, and manage energy consumption across your organization, right down to the system, chassis, or rack level. Once the trial ends, you can continue to use the monitoring functions — such as power trending, thermal trending, and PDU+ support — at no charge. For continued use of the management functions beyond the 60-day trial, the offering must be purchased".