IBM announces IMS V11

It looked like only a couple of months ago to me, but it's been almost a year since I wrote about the announcement of IMS V10. Still, here's already the announcement of IMS V11 (ZP08-0416) : 'IBM IMS V11 Database and Transaction Servers (QPP) deliver unsurpassed application and data serving'. Or perhaps I'd better call it pre-announcement. It only becomes available January 19,2009 for the "Quality Partnership Program (QPP) (...). IBM plans to ship IMS V11 to customers already selected as participants in the QPP process". So, next to the announcement, there's not much information to be found for the moment. But the announcement itself already gives plenty of details. Here are some of the highlights :

IMS^tm V11 Database Manager enhancements

• IMS Open Database support offers direct distributed TCP/IP access to IMS data, providing cost efficiency, enabling application growth, and improving resilience.
• Broadened Java^tm and XML tooling eases development and access of IMS data.
• IMS Fast Path Buffer Manager, Application Control Block library, and Local System Queue Area storage reduction utilize 64-bit storage to improve availability and overall system performance.
• Enhanced commands and user exits simplify operations and improve availability.

IMS V11 Transaction Manager enhancements

• IMS Connect (the TCP/IP gateway to IMS transactions, operations, and now data) enhancements offer improved IMS flexibility, availability, resilience, and security.
• Broadened Java and XML tooling eases IMS application development and connectivity, and enhances IMS Web services to assist developers with business transformation.
• Enhanced commands and user exits simplify operations and improve availability.
• IMS Application Control Block library and Local System Queue Area reduction utilize 64-bit storage to improve availability and system performance

When the actual availability date and more information become available, I'm definitely going to come back on this.

PAV vs. HyperPAV

I'm not taking any credit for this post, but if you want a simple and clear explanation of the differences between Static PAV, Dynamic PAV and HyperPAV, just head over to the IBM-Main Discussion list. Bill Fairchild of Rocket Software explains it all in a couple of sentences. I hope he doesn't mind quoting him and if you want some more detail, just get to the thread itself.

"First came static PAVs. You decide where the PAVs are inside each LCU (Logical Control Unit), a collection of up to 256 devices. If you want to change any of them, you have to redo your configuration. Lots of work. Error-prone PITA. Hard to change. You must know your hot devices in advance.

Next came dynamic PAV. The WLM decides within one LCU what should be PAVed for the next WLM interval in order to deliver your requested goals, WLM issues control I/O commands to the controller, PAV array is reset inside the controller, and the new PAV configuration is fixed in concrete (static) until the end of the next WLM interval, maybe 10 minutes later?

Next came HyperPAV. IOS decides on an I/O by I/O basis if a PAV is needed for the next I/O, finds one from a pool of available PAV UCBs, directs the new I/O to a PAVed UCB which the controller knows how to send to the proper device, then IOS returns the PAV UCB to the pool of available PAV UCBs when the I/O ends. You don't have to reconfig. You don't wait until the end of the WLM interval. IOS does no control I/O to tell the controller a new PAV configuration. Instantaneously dynamic as opposed to quasi-static as opposed to seriously static". (Bill Fairchild of Rocket Software)

Some z/VM news

z/VM 5.4 was announced (ZP08-0349) last month and for those who want to have some information on this new release there has been a webcast a couple of weeks ago. You can still find the replay of it on the Live Virtual Classes page. The presentation charts are still available too.

The webcast also gave some more information on how to install the evaluation version of z/VM 5.3. As a matter of fact, this is a free trial version of z/VM 5.3, not z/VM 5.4 - though only for z10 customers. It's normally limited to a 90-day trial. As it's not meant for production workload, it comes without support. You can read all about it on the special 'Z/VM 5.3 Evaluation Edition' page. There's an interesting FAQ and there's also a download link.

And it's not only this free version you can download : since January, 2008 "the z/VM base operating system and base options are available for Internet delivery for orders placed using ShopzSeries in countries where it is available". This includes z/VM 5.3 and z/VM 5.4. If you haven't used ShopzSeries before or you're not sure how to do this, there's a specific page : 'How specify Internet Delivery for your z/VM order on ShopzSeries', which gives you step by step instructions.

Full Free Air Cooling

I've never heard about this concept before and since the Green Data Center is at the centre of many people's attention, I thought I might mention this. The news item where I picked this up is in Dutch and you find it over here. It's a cooperation of Belgacom (Belgium's largest Telecom Operator), Sun Microsystems and Cisco. The purpose is to set up a Data Center without the traditional Air Cooling installation in order to obtain large energy savings. "The concept is based on the experience of several European Telecom Operators (eg Swisscom, BT, Belgacom) using Full Free Air cooling to substantially reduce the energy consumption in the Telecom Network". This was put into practice with a small scale data center at the Sun Solution Center in Schotland. Here's a representation of how it works :





You can find more information over here : Free Air Cooling Proof of Concept. There's also a FAQ and you can login to the system where the measurement equipment and the results are accessible. Just follow the instructions.

An interesting concept I'd say. The conclusions from the participants ?

• Applying Full Free Air Cooling in the data-center is realistic !
• Compared to an industry average PUE of 2, the potential overall data-center energy saving is 47%

NV RealDolmen

As of today, I'm no longer working for Dolmen CA but for NV RealDolmen. RealDolmen is a merger of two major ICT companies in Belgium : Real Software and Dolmen CA. Here's an extract from the press release that was issued yesterday September 1, 2008.

"RealDolmen becomes the reference partner in the local market for its customers, providing integrated ICT-solutionsand supporting the full ICT-lifecycle for its customers with a plan-build-operate approach. RealDolmen’s mission isto enable its clients to achieve their objectives by optimizing their business processes through innovative, effectiveand reliable ICT solutions.

Its single source offering is provided through three complementary solutions portfolios, making it possible to deliverfully integrated ICT-solutions.

• Business Solutions: these are the ICT-solutions built with own software or on top of 3rd partyplatforms. In this area RealDolmen will sell both services and products.
• Professional Services: encompasses software development and ICT-infrastructure related services aswell as products such as courseware, development and project management methodologies,reusable software modules and development frameworks.
• Infrastructure Products: Hardware products and software licensesRealDolmen’s ‘plan-build-operate’ approach allows scalable support for its customers, during any faze of their ICTprojects.

With sites in Huizingen, Kontich, Houthalen, Turnhout, De Pinte, Namur, Zaventem, Brussels, Harelbeke,Luxemburg, Paris and Lille, this combined geographical coverage, spread over the BeLux and France, willsignificantly increase the amount of service points for customers and will give them a partner who speaks both their local as well as their business language. This is an important first step in the RealDolmen Customer Focus Strategy.

With more than 1,900 professionals and partnerships with leading ICT companies such as IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, HP, Cisco, VMware, Cognos, Siebel, NEC Philips, JBoss and Citrix - the ‘Rock-Solid Passion for ICT’ of RealDolmen will put them in an important position in the ICT-market in the BeLux and France, offering its customers the best guarantees for the future

RealDolmen is listed on Euronext Brussels with ticker “REA”. The Gores Technology Group and the Colruyt family remain with 32 % and 16 % respectively the two most important shareholders of the company."

More information : http://www.realdolmen.be/.

Saving money with the zIIP - a sequel

Some time ago I tried to give a summary of ISVs using zIIPs and/or zAAPs in my post 'Saving money with the zIIP'. The ones I found at that moment were : Phoenix Software, Neon Enterprise Software, Computer Associates and Syncsort for z/OS. Follow the links, some are different than the ones before and give interesting additional information.

Why the sequel ? Well I told you I thought there would be more out there. So I was contacted by Greg Stasko of Datadirect Technologies who pointed out to me they too “have begun providing zIIP and zAAP support in the Shadow RTE product”. here's an introduction to the DataDirect Shadow/z products : DataDirect : A single Unified Mainframe Integration Architecture. A little quote : "Shadow 7 opens the zIIP to additional workloads beyond DB2, including mainframe data queries to IMS, VSAM, Adabas and IDMS, as well as SOAP/XML parsing for the transformation of business logic and screen logic (CICS, IMS, Natural, IDMS) into Web services".

Cheryl Watson also intends to make up a list of ISVs using zIIPs and zAAPs. I'll keep you informed when it's published.

New frames for the TS3500

Yesterday IBM made an announcement of two new, driveless frames for the TS3500 or 3584 Tape Library : 'New IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library Models S24 and S54 support higher density' (ZG08-0632). These driveless frames offer a higher density and therefore a higher capacity per frame. For the LTO frames there's the S54 frame with up to 1.320 slots offering a 3:1 increase in capacity. Replacing a model D23 by a S24 gives you a 2,5:1 increase with up to a thousand slots instead of 400. 600 slots are ready for use and you need an additional HD (High Density) CoD (Capacity on Demand) feature in order to use the next 400 slots.

Now don't think you can have up to 15.000 slots with all S24 frames. Apparantly it's limited to six frames and the maximum slots is 6.887 slots. I'm not exactly sure how this number is reached and I can't find much additional information for the moment.

The structure seems to be a tiered architecture. Up to now a cartridge cell only contained one cartridge. These cells are 'tiered' and can contain more than one cartridge. How this is actually operated in the TS3500, I'm not sure for the moment, but I guess pretty soon, more information will be coming our way about this.

Planned availability : November 7, 2008 (some additional features will be later).

The New Face of CICS

Here's another announcement from IBM for a product that should come available in Q4 2008 : 'Statement of direction: IBM CICS Explorer, the new face of CICS (ZA08-0185). The function should first become available to current releases of CICS TS as a SupportPac. It should become the new face of CICS or "Integration point for CICS tooling with rich CICS views, data, methods". You can find a brief description of it on the CICS Explorer page :

• Common, intuitive, Eclipse-based environment for architects, developers, administrators, system programmers, and operators
• Task-oriented views provide integrated access to broad range of data and control capabilities
• Powerful, context-sensitive resource editors
• Also packaged with Rational Developer for System z
• Integration point for CICS TS, CICS Tools, CICS TG, PD Tools, and Rational Tools
• Extensible by ISVs, SIs, and customers
• CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.1, V3.2. CICSPlex SM WUI server required for CICS resource views

Of course also The Master Terminal mentions this and there's a reference to the CICS Portfolio e-newsletter.

There's a Webcast on November 5, 2008 at 11am EST or 5pm in Brussels.
You can register over here.

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.

DS8000 Announcements

There have been a couple of announcements concerning the DS8000. First of all there's the predictable withdrawal of the 73GB 15.000 rpm disks (ZG08-0743). The withdrawal will be effective March 27, 2009.They are replaced by 146GB disks.

On the other end of the scale, there's the new 450 GB 15.000 rpm Fibre Channel Disk Drives with the following announcement : 'IBM System Storage DS8000 series delivers new flexibility and data protection options' (ZG08-0394 for the 242x series, ZG08-0369 for the 2107).
Here's an overview of the new features :

• RAID-6: Allows for additional fault tolerance by using a second independent distributed parity scheme (dual parity).
• 450 GB 15,000 rpm Fibre Channel Disk Drive - Provides additional capacity and another price/performance option for transaction processing workloads
• Variable LPAR: Provides the ability for Dual DS8000 images where one image has more processor and cache than the other for increased flexibility.
• Extended Address Volumes: Extends the addressing capability of System z^tm environments to support volumes that can scale up to approximately 223 GB (262,668 cylinders). This capability can help relieve address constraints to support large storage capacity needs.
• IPv6: The IBM System Storage DS8000 has been certified as meeting the requirements of the IPv6 Ready Logo program, indicating its implementation of IPv6 mandatory core protocols and the ability to interoperate with other IPv6 implementations.

Extended Address Volumes had already been previewed, so what jumps most to my attention is Raid-6 and Variable LPAR. The RAID-6 capability requires new device adapter cards, but there's some good news : "For DS8000 machines already installed, a feature conversion to the new device adapter cards will be available at no additional charge". Variable LPAR adds a 25/75 percent split to the former 50/50 percent split.

IBM also mentions the intention to provide 1 TB 7,200 RPM SATA disk drives at the beginning of 2009.

The Data Sheet has also been updated.

Komkommertijd ?

Well, I'm back and if you wonder what the title of this post means : I always thought the summertime was a quiet season. In Dutch we call this period 'komkommertijd', literally translated 'cucumber time'. The correct English term seems to be 'silly season'. Nothing much happens and the silliest news items, which would never stand a chance otherwise, seem to pop up, as there's nothing else happening. But apparantly not so at IBM : I've been out of the running for four weeks and the IBM announcements seem to have piled up : z/OS 1.10, z/VM 5.4, z/VSE 4.2, new DS8000 functions etc. So I'll try to give an overview in my next posts and I'll also try and catch up on some other interesting items and publications. As for now : "back to life, back to reality".

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 !

New TS1130 Tape Drive

Today, IBM announces the third generation of its 3592 technology, the new TS1130 Tape Drive, jumping ahead of the competition again. Or as the press release states : 'IBM Introduces the Industry's Fastest One Terabyte Storage Tape Drive'. For some odd reason I can't seem to read the European announcements (ZG08-0543 and ZG08-0544) yet. I'll give you an update on them as soon as they're available. For the moment I can refer to the US announcements 108-493 and 108-494.



The Highlights :

• Native data rate of 160 MB/s as opposed to 104MB/s for the TS1120 and up to 350 MB/s at 3:1 compression.
  
• It stores 1TB of uncompressed data on one cartridge.
• It supports backward compatibility for existing 3592 cartridges : read for Gen1 and read&write for Gen2.
• There's a MES upgrade available for the TS1120 drive.
• It supports data encryption and key management.
• GA : September 5, 2008.
  

Well, this is probable my last post before I go on holiday.
I'll be posting again from somewhere around August 18, 2008.

Here's the update on the European Announcements

• ZG08-0543 : IBM System Storage TS1130 Tape Drive Models E06 and other features enhance performance and capacity
• ZG08-0544 : IBM System Storage TS1130 Tape Drive supports controllers and subsystems

The Operation Was a Success, But the Patient Died

OK, I deliberately left out the first part of the title. It actually goes : 'IBM vs PSI : The Operation Was a Success, But the Patient Died'. The title is from an article of the IT-Jungle newsletter from July 08, 2008. By the way, you can subscribe to the newsletter over here. Yes, IBM just took over PSI last week and both companies dropped all charges against each other and both companies came out victorious, or something like that. There have been lots of comments on this acquisition and not every one seems to be as happy with this. I quote from an article on the CCIA site :

“This is a Black Hole acquisition,” said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. “It sucks the life out of the market and destroys the matter. Transforming a market with latent potential for competition and innovation into a sector with little prospects for anything but complete domination by IBM.”

CCIA is an international, nonprofit association of computer and communications industry firms, representing a broad cross section of the industry.

Back to the article : I won't repeat its content but it gives a good overview of what happened over the last months to PSI but it also comments on FLEX-ES, Hercules and T3. So : a revised overview on mainframe emulation I already wrote about earlier.

As I always say : just check it out !

CICS Transaction Server in your SOA

Here's an interesting publication from Andrew Bates (IBM) : 'CICS Transaction Server in your SOA, subtitled 'links to more information on the CICS ecosystem'. in fact it's set up as a presentation with links to all kinds of CICS TS related information like "Redbook publications, Whitepapers, Webcasts, Teleconferences, or other articles pertaining to the topic. Issue 3 became available in May of 2008. Updates are flagged so you can identify them easily". Here's the summary of the pages and their topics :

• CICS Transaction Server
• Families that support CICS
• Enterprise Modernization and CICS
• Tivoli® support for CICS
• CICS Service Flow Feature
• CICS and service oriented architecture (SOA)
• CICS and WebSphere® Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) infrastructure
• CICS and Business Process Management (BPM)
• CICS and Web Services
• CICS Transaction Gateway
• CICS and WebSphere MQ
• CICS and Java™
• Channels and Containers
• Threadsafe and open transaction environment (OTE)
• CICSPlex® Systems Manager (SM)
• CICS Tools
• Problem Determination Tools
• Rational® support for CICS
• COBOL and CICS

If you want to be kept up to date and receive following issues, just send a mail to Andrew Bates.