Fellow Bloggers

Starting a blog is not that difficult. You have lots of ideas and you have the impression that no one is properly covering that domain you're particularly interested in. So you start off writing with a lot of enthusiasm. Still, I see that lots of blogs just fade away in time. And I guess that one of the greatest disappointments is the lack of response you get. Blogging is, whether you like it or not, more than other social media mostly one way traffic. That's why I've always tried to make some publicity for other bloggers who passed my way. Unfortunately, a lot of those I've mentioned in the past came ànd went due to some or other circumstances.

Still, I would like to mention a couple of new or existing blogs I visit regularly (or rather : I let Feeddemon do that for me). Here we go - in random order.

• Accelerate with ATS
  This developerWorks blog is from IBM Americas ATS (Advanced Technical Skills) and is mainly a platform for announcing their webcasts on storage hardware and software. Some topics that were covered : LTFS LE for Windows, XIV Technical update, TPC Performance Management, DS8870 Technical update ... The latest post is announcing a webcast on Understanding and Analyzing TS7700 Performance that takes place on April 18, 2013.

• Inside Systems Support
  This blog helps you optimize your experience of the Support Portal with posts like Customizing your view in IBM Support Portal, Benefits of Signing in to Support Portal, IBM Support Portal: An Overview, Looking for an item in IBM Support? Let our search engines help you!, Managing your product list in IBM Support Portal ... Definitely worth a look !

• MVS program blog
  This is a Share blog by Mary Anne Matyaz aka ZOSsygirl that's been around for about almost a year now. It's very to the point and covers, as the title already says, all kinds of MVS stuff. A couple of titles : Shedding light on the "Top 5 obscure z/OS tools you're not using" (about ao Parallel Sysplex Inject Error tool, Mark Zelden's IPLINFO Rexx, Lookat ...), The Very Best of z/OS 2.1, My zAware Quickstart Guide (very nice article) etc. etc.

• Ingolf's z/VSE Blog
  This blog only exists for about a month but seems to be a real asset for the z/VSE community. The intentions of Ingolf Salm are clear : "With this blog I want to provide information about the mainframe operating system z/VSE. That is news, hints & tips, any z/VSE topic you are interested in, where I am knowledgable. I hope you will find this blog valuable".Well, I do. I won't give you any titles because if you're into z/VSE you just have to go and take a look at it !

Well that's it. And, as I always say : just check them out !

#mainframedebate, twitter, mainframe blog and Enterprise Virtualization with z/VM

Some three years ago I had my little say about Twitter over here and back then (ages ago) I referred to an article on 'The four stages of the average Twitter user' and I think the article is still relevant. The four stages are : Confusion and Indignation, The first "Aha!" Moment, Remembering to Tweet and Thinking in 140 characters. Three years ago I was definitely a stage one person. But things - and people - evolve. I've discovered that lots of information and links to interesting blogs comes a lot faster via Twitter. So, I'm tweeting a reference to my blog posts myself, I'm checking the tweets of people I follow at least twice a day, I'm re-tweeting interesting stuff and this all mostly via Tweetdeck. Am I hooked to it, not really : I'm only using it for professional purposes and I haven't gone mobile ... yet.

And so my post starts with the hashtag #mainframedebate. For those not familiar with the term, a hashtag is a kind of search argument you can add to a tweet. If people search on it, they get all tweets around this topic. And, if all people start using that hashtag at the same moment, you can start a debate. Well, yesterday I received an invite from Steven Dickens (@StevenDickens3) which went like this :

@mwambeke planning to join us? #mainframedebate 5th Dec | 4pm GMT | 11am EST

So tomorrow at 4pm GMT you can join this debate on twitter posing as many questions as you like about the mainframe. You need a twitter account to participate but you can follow the discussion over here as well.
If you want some more information, you can have a look at the Mainframe and Hybrid Computing blog from Steven who also organized the first debate and wrote about it in a couple of posts last September.

It's free association today, so this topic also brings me to Stevens blog. I didn't know it before but Steven writes quite some interesting stuff on mainframe and cloud computing. His latest post is about Cloud Computing and the Cult of x86. He refers to a white paper 'Comparing Virtualization Alternatives - What's best for your business?' which you can find via this link. "The purpose of this analysis was to examine the real-world  impact on businesses that deploy IBM’s z/VM virtualization product, compared to those using UNIX or x86 products". If you want to make a stand for z/VM as virtualization platform this is a very useful document with lots of arguments and graphs illustrating every aspect of the comparison.

And . . . don't forget to join the #mainframedebate tomorrow !

z/VM turns 40 next month : some history and a new blog

IBM announced its first official VM product (then called VM/370) on August 2, 1972. As times changed, so did VM. You may have known it by one or more of its many flavors (VM/SP, VM/XA, VM/SP HPO, VM/IS, VM/ESA) that preceded today's z/VM. So, z/VM is turning 40 next month.

If you want to learn some more on the history of VM, there's already a VM History and Heritage Reference page over here.

This anniversary seems to have been a good reason for Bill Bitner to start a blog on this called : '40 Reflections for 40 Years of z/VM'. You can find it over here. The author's intentions ?

As the IBM z/VM product approaches its 40th Anniversary on August 2, 2012, the author takes time to reflect on the product and his experiences.

Go and have a look at it. One of the questions that, obviously, pops up is "What is a VM?". In another post Bill refers to Brian Wade's phrase saying it is z/VM's role to "faithfully replicate the architecture". He also comments on the z/VM community, the people behind the product (IBM, customers), influential people etc.
I think I'll pass the link along to my VMWare colleagues as well. After all they might be interested in how VMWare will evolve the next 30 years.

As I always say, just check it out !

Fellow bloggers

It's easy to follow blogs when you subscribe to their feeds and follow them via Google Reader or Outlook or a desktop application like FeedDemon. Over the last couple of months I added some to my list and I just wanted to tell you about a couple of them, because I think they give some really good information on the subjects they're writing about. I must say most of them are storage-related and not all of them focus on mainframe or mainframe related storage. But hey, we've got to keep an open mind, no ?

• DancingDinosaur - Mainframe computing in the 21st century
  This is a blog by "Alan Radding (...) a 20-year IT industry analyst and journalist covering mainframe, midrange, PC, web, and cloud computing". The latest posts are mainly about the z196. Don't expect any technical posts (hey, that's why I'm here for) but Alan writes about new workloads, Linux on mainframe, IBM's strategy concerning mainframe ...

• The Storage Buddhist
  "Philosophical ramblings on storage by a guy who would really rather be sailing. Jim Kelly is a storage architect currently working for IBM New Zealand, in the mighty Pacific Ocean". Don't get this wrong : here are some very good posts with recent subjects like where and when to use SSDs, StorWize, Easy Tier, Quality of Service on StorWize and SVC ...

• Barry Whyte - An exchange and discussion of Storage Virtualization
  This is an IBM blog with focus on virtualization. No need to say recent coverage was largely on StorWize and SVC. But there's also an interesting 'Brief history of recent time' covering storage history from 1990 up to now.

• Anthony's Blog: Using System Storage - The view from down under
  "Anthony Vandewerdt works for IBM Australia as a Storage Solutions Specialist. His goal is to share his knowledge and experience of using IBM Storage solutions and learn more along the way"
  I like this one, along with the next one, a lot ! Anthony writes about his own experiences and this definitely includes quite some posts on (installing) XIV. Another nice feature is that we regularly get updates from the IBM support site on every kind of storage.
  

• Storage CH Blog - an (IBM) Storage-related Blog
  This blog is by Roger Luethy, Storage Specialist at IBM Switzerland. The focus is mainly on providing information on anything storage related. It has a very wide coverage on redbooks, installations, announcements, other interesting blog posts, competition ... Roger is quite prolific following everything very closely.
  

So, as I always say : do check them out !

Reblogging on DB2, zIIP and XIV GUI

I thought I had come up with a new word, when I thought of reblogging. People who are familiar with Twitter, know you can retweet a tweet (message) some one else put on Twitter. I'm just trying not to be too obscure for non-twitter-ers. In fact, you just repeat a message by some one else because you think it might be interesting for your own followers. And if there's some space left, you can even add some comments.

So today I came across a couple of tweets referring to blog posts. As I really liked the blog posts, I retweeted those tweets, but then I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could also reblog the blog posts, referring to the original poster and adding some comments. I'm hoping this doesn't look to much like speech therapy or a poetic alliteration effort for people not familiar with these terms, but do read on, there's following some more familiar content.

So, it turns out that reblogging already exists and you can e.g. use it in between wordpress blogs. It's not supported between several types of blogs. So, here I go, the oldfashioned way.

The first blog post I want to mention is by Willie Favero : 'Improved zIIP redirect'. Willie tells about an APAR on DB2. It should allow you to improve the redirection of DRDA workload over TCP/IP to the zIIP from some 45%-50% to about 60%. If that ain't worth a reblog ?! Just go over there to read all the details. By the way, Willie will also be presenting at the Total Solutions Event in September at the IBM Forum in Brussels.

The second blog post is from Anthony Vandewerdt who works for IBM Australia as a Storage Solutions Specialist and who has a blog on System Storage. His post is about XIV : 'Even more praise for the XIV GUI'. It just gives you another illustration of how easy and how intuitive the User Interface for XIV is. And of how easily you can obtain status information from about any component in the machine, up to the fans. You'll also see that you can download the GUI, even if you don't have an XIV ... yet. So, just give it a try, you'll like it !

By the way, I won't be posting again before the end of next week. The children are doing their last exam today and tomorrow we're off to the city of angels and demons visiting my brother for an extended weekend.

Short takes

Catching up again with some short messages on the New Mainframe Executive Magazine, a definition of Cloud computing, an article on z/OS deduplication, CA May Mainframe madness and SELCOPY/i.

• The New Mainframe Executive Magazine for March/April is out. A couple of articles I liked : The consolidation experiences to Linux on System z by the Italian Gruppo Api, an interview with Reed Mullen with a more high-level approach on Linux on System z plus the various Solutions IBM is offering for it and 'Tape a collapsing star' by Randy Chalfant stating : "(...) tape will die because it can't follow or match current market conditions and requirements (...) users will simply stop writing data to tape; they'll opt for disk instead'. Want to find out more : you can download the .pdf over here.

• This is why I like reading James Governor's Monkchips. The definition of Cloud Computing is actually quite simple : "The next time someone tries to take you through 30 slides explaining the cloud you can just nod sagely, and say… “ohhhh. you mean servers, middleware and apps. Yeah I get it.” A true adherent of cloud computing !

• I wrote a little article on Protectier deduplication in our System z Newsletter and put it also on this blog. If you want to get a little more in-depth insights on z/OS Deduplication and on deduplication workload characterization, the you might want to take a look at this paper in the published papers section of the Performance Associates site : 'z/OS Data De-de-de-de-duplication' by Dr. Pat Artis.

• Perhaps a bit early to already call it a tradition but here's CA May Mainframe Madness 2010. You can register over here.

• It's not my habit to talk about third party products, but this one brought back some nice memories for me. I remember a time when there was ISPF for Windows. Perhaps it still exists and there are still people using it, I wouldn't know. But now I had a mail about a "windows style desktop on the mainframe". So, not familiarizing people with Windows by using ISPF; no, more like familiarizing people with z/OS by using Windows. I'm talking about Selcopy/i. So I took a look at their site and found an overview video. It reminded me of my time as a COBOL programmer in the early nineties. I was working for Dolmen at AnHyp at the time and one of my colleages over there, Frank van Aert, had developed or taken over some kind of self-written ISPF application which was called YP or YPN. The basic principle, though, looked pretty much the same, you edited a file and could start all kinds of operations from there on like editing files, doing listcats, jumping to ISPF 3.4 using wildcards, listing often used files, putting your cursor on it and providing all kinds of actions on it depending on the PFkey you were pressing etc. etc. It definitely saved you lots of time, so I eagerly assisted in further developing it. So far for the memories, Selcopy/i goes further than this of course, presenting it all in some windows like environment young people might like and definitely offering much more functionalities than our little application did. If you're interested, just check it out.
  Oops, not such a short take, this one. Perhaps I should try and contact Frank again, it's been a while . . .
  

Vote for DB2 and mainframe crossword

Just a quick note that also gives me the opportunity to mention a couple of valuable DB2 resources. I picked this up from Graig Mullins' Blog via DB2 Planet : Vote for DB2. Just follow this link and you can vote for your favourite DBMS. I have no intention whatsoever to influence you voting behaviour but yours is DB2 of course. The poll isn't that recent, but while you're there, do check out the mainframe crossword they also put up on the site.

Growing Academic Initiative

I just came across this chart and couldn't resist putting it up before leaving on holiday so I can end on a positive note. As you see, the Academic initiative is really doing great :
If you want to find out more, you can go to the IBM Academic Initiative System z Program page.

And for the occasional young people coming across this blog, there's an interesting interactive module on Careers in Mainframe in the Learn Section. Ok, the module is a few years old, stating the z990 as one of the newest machines around, but the message still comes across.

And rest assured, you can definitely build a career in mainframe. Look e.g. at the zNextGen initiative. I already mentioned Kristin Harper's blog which has now changed into Kristin Neely's Newbie blog (by the way, congratulations Kristin) and maybe by now Kristin should consider leaving out the 'newbie' in the blog title. But I see also the deputy Project Manager of zNextGen, Reg Harbeck, has his own blog. Here's a piece of his writing :

"Tron" - remember that? If you do, you're definitely old enough to be a mainframer.
Then again, pretty soon, the average mainframer may be so young they won't even remember Y2K.
And that's OK. As the first generations of mainframers pass the torch to the next generation, the important thing is that the new generation inherits something that works.
That's the beauty of the mainframe (...)

As you see, I'm just putting up a teaser. For the rest, you'll have to go over there and check it out yourselves.

And by the way : have a nice holiday !

The Master Terminal

A little correction : I put up a post on two CICS blogs, last Friday.
Apparently I forgot the link to the second one from the people at Hursley : 'The Master Terminal'. And you definitely should take a look over there.
In the meantime, the youngest member of the team, Chris Hodgins, has answered Corneel's thoughts about Cobol and CICS extensively. Interesting reading !

Is COBOL killing CICS ?

How's that for a starter ? I must immediately admit, it's not my quote, it comes from Corneel's Blog at the CICS Community Forums page. I recently came across this blog of Corneel Booysen, also the driving force behind the CICS Wiki, I discussed earlier. He writes a great article on how COBOL is a threat for CICS as CICS is put in the same bad daylight as COBOL. I hope Corneel won't mind me quoting a couple of extracts. But be sure to read the entire article. And there'll be coming an 'Uncertain Future of CICS Part 2'.

The very same thing that has been the bread-and-butter of the mainframe for so long and has helped IBM build their mainframe empire – is the thing that threatens to kill it but more specifically in this case – CICS. The monstrous monolithic mass that is the 500 billion lines of COBOL code that companies still maintain has become a dingy little secret that is kept in the basement of many a fortune 500 company. That missing code, the retiring programmer community has become the “Unmovable Object”.

Companies actively develop themselves out of trouble. They have given up on converting or migrating COBOL code or COBOL people to anything else. They replace the functionality with newer systems, in modern programming languages developed by enthusiastic people that enjoy working with computers. In fact I dare to say that the users of modern programming languages and technologies has a much firmer grasp on information management and computer science theory than the typical COBOL programmer.

A couple of posts earlier Corneel is also discussing 'The Aging Mainframe Workforce' : "I believe that IBM is dedicated to the future of the mainframe. The question is - are we? I suppose (or hope) the initial response to the question would be “Yes”. But the unavoidable follow-up to that is - what are we doing about it? Are we creating an environment that promotes and nurtures new talent?" For the answer, you'll have to read his post.

Corneel also points to another CICS blog that has just started : 'The Master Terminal'. Its intentions : "This unofficial blog is written by a hopefully expanding group of people in IBM Hursley and beyond who work on CICS. Expect to see posts on conferences, code samples, helpful hints and anything else that we can think of". It does look interesting but I'll hold my 'judgement' as they only started out March 31, 2008.

But I think I found two interesting blogs on CICS worth checking out regularly.

Fellow bloggers : update

Since I gave some comments in April on the blogs I regularly visit, there's been some changes and I also added a couple of blogs. So here's an update.

For some time already I added Eightbar : this is a blog from "a group of techie/creative people working in and around IBM’s Hursley Park Lab in the UK", as they describe themselves. And no, to anticipate the question, the blog is not about CICS. It's a group of people strongly involved in the Virtual World concepts like e.g. Second Life. So, if you want to stay up to date on all these matters, this is the place to be. You can e.g. read some comments on the new IBM announcement on working together with the Linden Labs from Second Life. The ultimate goal goes way beyond Second Life as IBM (with others) aims at creating one single, linked virtual environment of the individual virtual worlds where you can move around freely with one universal avatar. Even (or also) here, standards will be needed.

I also added The Raised Floor when it was launched together with Project Big Green. It's a blog "tracking changes in corporate data centers as they become greener, more efficient and more indispensable to business". I know blogging frequency can go up and down but for the moment I must say I'm a bit disappointed about this one. It started off very well but with only two posts to last five months (and a copied post from the Mainframe Weblog), I hope this is not one disappearing off the radar.

I just added Susan Visser's Build your Skill on DB2 blog to my list. Subtitle to the blog : 'books, certifications, tutorials, and more'. And you may say : 'much more'. This blog does not really give you the breaking news on DB2, but it gives you all the documentation you need to understand this breaking news. It covers all kinds of books, redbooks, links, presentations and lots more on DB2. It also gives you all information on how to prepare for certifications. In short, this is a great source for anyone who's looking for documentation on DB2 and related subjects.

Finally, an update. Trevor Eddolls will no longer contribute to the Mainframe Weekly blog. Trevor has put up a new blog named Mainframe Update and he transfered his posts to this blog. I'm not sure what will happen with Mainframe Weekly. There's a new post, I think, suggesting the blog will continue and it's also referring to a new newsletter Xephon launced at www.mainframeupdate.com "designed to bring you information from all over the web. News items, announcements, tips, tools and tidbits from the web that you may have missed".
To be continued !

Fellow bloggers

I have only a handfull of blogs related to mainframe that I visit regularly. I know it's a very personal choice. Still I'd like to put them under your attention, in case you didn't know them. I find them important as they often give a second opinion on certain matters.

I've already metioned Willie Favero's DB2 for z/OS blog who always has some interesting news on DB2 and brings it in a very intelligible way.

There's of course the well-known Mainframe Weblog with most recent posts by Timothy Sipples.

There's also Kristine Harper's Newbie Blog. It has been a bit quiet on her blog, been she now seems to have found her second breath with topics on 'Mainframe Listservs' and some of her 'Favorite ISPF Commands'. Maybe Kristine was inspired by the discussion a couple of weeks back on the IBM-Main Discussion List opposing ISPF and XEDIT to one another. I have the intention of coming back to that too in a later topic as I once made a comparison of the most important commands and settings for both editors.

This week I added three others. First there's the Mainframe Performance Topics blog by Martin Packer, who brought the zNALC Apar OA20314 under my attention.

Another blog is Mainframe Weekly with a more or less weekly comment on mainframe. Main contributor is Trevor Eddolls. Recent topics include 'Big Blue goes green', 'CICS V3.2 - Do I need it ?' and 'SOA - Same Old Architecture'.

Last but not least, there's James Governor’s Monkchips. Where do I begin ? James also contributes to the Mainframe Weblog : "James is Principal Analyst and co-founder of RedMonk, LLC. He leads coverage in enterprise architecture and frameworks, assisting clients with application development, integration middleware and systems management issues, as they relate to operational and business process optimization". James covers a much wider range than mainframe in his own blog, it's not even a main focus, but when he comments on it, it's usually spot-on. Recently he commented on the use of the Microsoft HIS (Host Integration Server) put to discussion by Timothy Sipples in the Mainframe weblog and also posted the reply of Charles Fitzgerald (Microsoft general manager of platform strategy) on the Mainframe Blog.

So as I always say, just check them out.
And if you're as lucky as I am, you have an extra long weekend to do so : our Labor Day is on the first of May instead of on the first Monday of September in the U.S.

Kristine Harper's Newbie Blog

In one of my former posts discussing the mainframe making its comeback I mentioned an article on the 23 year old Kristine Harper illustrating there are still young people interested in the mainframe. Kristine is also Project Manager of zNextGen. zNextGen is co-sponsored by IBM and Share and is "a brand new user-driven community for new and emerging IT professionals focused on mainframe computing. (...) The expressed goal of the zNextGen community is to serve as the gateway for newcomers to leverage the experience of mainframe veterans and expedite their professional development in this crucial segment of the IT workforce." I also just found out that Kristine has her own 'Newbie Blog'. Her most recent post is on Assembler Myths Dispelled!.
Once again, I'd say, just check it out !