Sampling Techdocs : September

I had my last Sampling Techdocs at the beginning of July. Summer also slowed down the publishing pace on Techdocs but it now seems to catch up again. So here we go for another round of interesting documents (to me at least) that I found at Techdocs, covering the latest three months.

• White Paper : A Power Benchmarking Study on the IBM System z9: Applying Energy Efficiency Metrics to Performance
  "This paper will demonstrate the role of the IBM System z9 as an excellent platform for power efficiency and performance, discuss tools used for measuring z9 power, highlight a Java power benchmarking study on this platform, and analyze client server consolidation as an energy management strategy. The paper will conclude with next steps in power benchmarking for the IBM System z9".
  
  
• White Paper : IMS Disaster Recovery with GDPS
  This paper describes the role of GDPS at an IMS site. First there's a description of some concepts (Recovery Time / Point Objective, Synchronous and Asynchronous writes). Next GDPS is explained into more detail. Then there's a topic on dependent writes and consistency groups. You have to have consistent recovery points for restart and recovery of data. The next topic is on IMS Coupling Facility Structures. In IMS some CF structures are good candidates for duplexing, others are not. Furthermore there's info on testing, customer references and some interesting links to more information.
  
  
• Technote : IBM Tape Encryption for TS1120 and IBM Ultrium 4 Tape Drives
  Encryption is not really my forte, so I'm glad to have come across this document. It gives an overview of tape encryption, the Encryption Key Manager (EKM) and a detailed description of the Encryption - Decryption process. I think I'm finally getting to understand this matter.
  
  
• Technote : TPC Licenses Comparison SE - LE
  This document lists out the differences between TPC Limited Edition and Official TPC 3.3 licensed versions.
  
  
• Tool : WebSphere for z/OS Version 6 - Configuration Planning Spreadsheet
  "Anyone who has tried to configure a WebSphere Application Server for z/OS Version 6 runtime environment knows that one thing just can't be avoided -- the planning of short names, long names, JCL proc names, IDs, UIDs, GIDs and ports. Unless you do some up-front planning of all those things, you'll quickly get lost in the configuration panels. What this spreadsheet does is take the work out of doing that. By capturing a few key variables, this spreadsheet does all the rest -- it calculates and allocates TCP ports, UID and GID values; it constructs names based on root character strings ... in short, it makes things a whole lot easier".
  
  
• Summary : zSref_Channels: A Guide to ESCON and FICON Features for zSeries and System z9
  Nice reference charts of all ESCON and FICON feature codes on all zSeries and Systems z.
  
  
• White Paper : TS7700 Copy Export V10
  This white paper describes a new function on the TS7700. "With Copy Export, logical volumes written to a TS7700 can be removed from the TS7700 and taken to an offsite location to be used for disaster recovery". Don't get confused : you still need a TS7700 at the recovery site to restore these tapes.
  

Surely there are many more articles like e.g. the ones on using the z9 CPACF Crypto Functions, a new version of the System Programmer Productivity Tool Bag, Moving Applications to WebSphere on z/OS and so on.

As I always say : just check them out !