Holiday

I've had, in my mind at least, lots of years where IBM launched a new system just when I was leaving for my summer holidays. Well, not so this year. No new z13 BC or z14 on the horizon and all's quiet. Time to sneek out for a couple of weeks.I'll see you all back in September. Now I've just got only one key to press . . .

IBM z/OS V2R2 officially announced

On Tuesday IBM announced z/OS 2.2 : 'IBM z/OS Version 2 Release 2 -- Fueling the digital enterprise (ZP15-0369)'. Let me give you some general statements about this new release and it's obvious you will get the most out of it when you're on a z13.

"Exceptional service levels for scalable environments and clouds
z/OS enhancements leverage the new z13 chip multithreading design, vector processing, and huge amounts of memory to help with throughput, performance, and latency

Enable analytics with information management, storage, and delivery
Data serving is promoted to a new level with new I/O capabilities designed for throughput and autonomics, enhanced vector processing support, and memory scalability designed to improve performance

Deliver a trusted and resilient system of record
With its legendary security and support for the most highly regulated industries, z/OS V2.2 is designed to help you build public key infrastructure services, serves as your secured data vault, helps you meet regulatory requirements, and can help reduce operational risk

Capture the potential of the mobile enterprise
With new capabilities on near real time, you can understand customer sentiment, analyze information for more targeted insight, conduct transactions with a mobile device, and serve customers across the globe"

 z/OS 2.2 together with the z13 is positioned as thé modern platform ready for future innovations at your shop.

When we look at the prerequisites, you have to be on z10 or later in order to be able to run z/OS 2.2.

z/OS 2.2 becomes available on September 30, 2015. If you're on z/OS 1.13 or z/OS 2.1 you can upgrade directly to z/OS 2.2 with full coexistence, migration, and fallback support. If you're on z/OS 1.12 you will have to pass through z/OS 2.1. You can still order z/OS 2.1 (as I already pointed out in a previous post) until January 25, 2016.

And for all the fascinating technical details, just check out the announcement itself !

Change to start of warranty period for IBM-installed hardware

Last week IBM made the following announcement : ' Change to start of warranty period for IBM-installed hardware (ZG15-0164)'. I'll be focusing on the situation in Belgium which is the same for most European countries. Otherwise, be sure to check the announcement itself.

How was it before the announcement ?
If I look at System z I think the installation was the criterium for starting the maintenance. Once the installation was finished, maintenance started on the first of the following month.

How will it be now ?

"On July 7, 2015, IBM will begin a new process for starting the warranty on new IBM Systems hardware sales that require IBM installation. Once implemented, the warranty for machines that require IBM installation will commence upon the earlier of the business day following the completion of the installation by IBM, or:

• 45 days following the shipment from IBM for all countries within the Europe IOT (excluding Russia)"

So, you have two options : either it starts the business day following the completion of the installation or it starts 45 days following the shipment from IBM. The first mentions 'business days', the second just mentions 'days'. And I also think that shipment date is the same as delivery date, or at least I hope so.

This is valid for

• IBM z Systems servers
• IBM Power systems
• IBM System Storage
• IBM WebSphere appliances (MQ, DataPower, XC10, and Cast Iron)
• IBM PureApplication Systems

FLASH: Info Letter: Changes to ECC broadband callhome server IP addresses

This Flash concerns the call home function of the TSSC (TS3000 System Console), which is the console that's used for IBM tape products like the TS3500 Tape Library (3584), the TS7700 Virtualization Engine, the TS7650 Deduplication product(s) ... If you want a clear introduction to the TSSC and the Electronic Customer Care & Assist On Site, you can find a very good presentation by Joachim Müller over here.

ECC is used "to provide broadband connectivity for both Dial-in and/or Dial-out for the attached Tape Products. While TS3000 supports modem attachment for Dial-in and Dial-out as well, broadband connectivity is the recommended method in todays infrastructure".

Now, what's the Flash about ? I'm taking over most of the content

Abstract

The IP addresses for some of the ECC target server are being changed. 

Background:
As documented in the IBM Data Protection & Retention (DP&R) System Connectivity and Security Whitepaper v2.10 from 4/16, one server will be discontinued and replaced by a new server, for both basic ECC callhome as well as ECC Edge callhome. www.ibm.com/support/techdocs/atsmastr.nsf/WebIndex/WP102531
--> This link doesn't seem to work, so try V2.20 of the document over here.

Solution (Procedure):
Customer network configuration may need to be updated in order to allow the ECC client running on TSSC to be able to connect to the new server IP address through the customer firewall or proxy server.
Failure to update firewall/proxy rules may eventually result in failure to successfully call home.
Note: No changes are required to TSSC configuration itself. Updated ECC configuration is downloaded by the callhome process automatically.


For completeness, here are the products that are affected

• TS3500 Tape Library (3584)
• TS7700 Virtualization Engine)
• TS7650 Deduplication Appliance (3958-AP1) ProtecTIER Appliance Edition
• TS7650G Deduplication Gateway (3958-DD1-5) ProtecTIER Enterprise Edition

Red Alert for IBM DB2 V10 and DB2 V11 users

Here's a new Red Alert. I'm taking over part of the content.


Title:

For DB2 V10 and DB2 V11 users: DB2 log records may be written with invalid control information in certain rare cancel window situations and cause unpredictable results 

Abstract:

DB2 log records may be written with invalid control information in certain rare cancel window situations. This could cause log read errors, data replication issues, recovery issues, or even potential data loss. Both DB2 10 and 11 systems are affected, although the exposure is higher for DB2 11 systems that have not converted BSDS data sets to use 10 byte RBA values. DB2 9 and prior releases are not affected.

There's an entire description in the Red Alert itself. Let me just give you the recommended actions.

Recommended Actions for DB2 11 customers:

1. Install APAR PI41630 (PTF UI28315). This fix will prevent log records with LRSN value of 'FFFFFFFFFBAD'x being created.
2. Install APARFIX for PI42170 (AI42170) or PTF when available. This fix will prevent log records with invalid values being created, and it contains toleration code to recognize and recover from the incorrect values, including LRSN value of 'FFFFFFFFFBAD'x.

Recommended Actions for DB2 10 customers:

1. Install APARFIX for PI42170 (AI42170) or PTF when available. This fix will prevent log records with invalid values being created, and it contains toleration code to recognize and recover from the incorrect values, including LRSN value of 'FFFFFFFFFBAD'x if the system fallback from DB2 11.

 If you haven't signed up to the Red Alerts by now, you really should do it. Just go over here.