We won ! We won !

I know I have some catching up to do and I promise I'll definitely make a couple of posts next week, but it's been quite busy the last few weeks.
Still I definitely want to share this with you. You know I'm working as a presales consultant for a Belgian IBM Business Partner NV RealDolmen. Well, we just won an award. No not an Oscar, my acting talents aren't that good. But we did win the IBM "STG Winback of 2008", as we teamed up with IBM to realize the largest winback in Belgium for 2008.

Our customer Belgacom, a Belgian Telecom Operator, is running an IDMS database application on two Siemens BS2000 mainframes. After an intensive presales period of 2 years, Belgacom decided last year to migrate their application to an IBM platform. No, not just any platform : the IBM System z10, of course !

So, we're quite proud that we've been able to realize this winback and to illustrate this, here's a picture of me and my colleague Geert Maes who's our System z Solution Sales Manager. By the way, I'm on the left, but you might've already guessed that ;-)

Click to view larger picture in new window

Linux on IBM System z Resources

I came across this document some time ago, but I couldn't find any link to it on the IBM zLinux page. But now it's there, or perhaps there again. If you look at the right hand side, there's an 'Information Resources' title with a link saying 'Check it out'. Well, just click on it. It gives you a wonderful .pdf document which gives you exactly what it says : "This paper provides an overview of the available information resources for Linux on System z, and the URLs for easy access to the information". Some items

• Linux on IBM System z Web Pages
• IBM and ISV Solutions
• Customer References
• Websphere, Cognos, SAP, Oracle
• Linux on System z Distributors
• Linux on System z Services & Support
• Education
• Performance information
• Data sheets, White papers, FAQs

Quite an extensive list, no ?
So, just as I also use to say : just check it out !

DS8000 : The Fast, The Large and the Encrypted

I know, not really a dazzling pun, but here we are with, once again, new functionalities on the DS8000 box : 'IBM System Storage DS8000 series delivers new security, scalability, and business continuity capabilities (ZG09-0158)'. As I already stated in my 2008 review : the DS8000 remains thé strategic enterprise storage box for IBM and I don't think we have seen the end of it.
What about my title : The Fast for the introduction of Solid State Disks, The Large for the (already previewed) introduction of the 1TB SATA disks and the Encrypted for the use of Encryption Disks. Next to that there's also Intelligent Write Caching and Remote Pair FlashCopy.
Here's a summary of the new functionalities taken from the announcement :

Full Disk Encryption
Provides encryption support using Encrypting Disks and supported key manager software. Available capacities are 146 GB 15,000 rpm Fibre Channel,300 GB 15,000 rpm Fibre Channel and 450 GB 15,000 rpm Fibre Channel.
Intermixing of drives is not supported, so the entire subsystem is either encrypted drives or intermixed devices of Fibre Channel, SATA, and SSD devices.

SATA drive support
Provides 1 TB 7,200 rpm SATA disk drives to support various fixed-content, data-archival, reference-data, and other applications that require large amounts of storage capacity at lower cost per MB.
Supported RAID configurations are RAID-6 and RAID-10.

Solid State Drives (SSD)
Provides support for solid state disks to support high-performance business-critical applications. Supported RAID configurations are RAID-5. Available capacities are 73 GB SSD Fibre Channel and 146 GB SSD Fibre Channel.
The announcement states they have a nominal speed of 150,000 rpm. Isn't that ten times . . . yes it is !

Intelligent Write Caching
Provides non-volatile storage (NVS) and cache management algorithm improvement designed to improve aggregate throughput and reduce aggregate response times.

Remote Pair FlashCopy
Provides management improvement to resiliency solutions. These improvements are designed to reduce configuration steps required in a redundant environment utilizing Point in Time Copy and Metro Mirror. (...) The IBM DS8000 provides the Remote Pair FlashCopy with the capability to allow a FlashCopy relationship where the FlashCopy target device is a Metro Mirror primary device. z/OS® support of Remote Pair FlashCopy will be available on z/OS V1.8, or later, using the name FlashCopy Preserve Mirror.

A couple of remarks.

• As always there's a separate announcement for the original 2107 DS8000 box (ZG09-0157) but this time there's a difference : no SSDs nor Encryption disks on the 2107.
• The Solid State Disks should be particularly interesting for performance critical DB2 workload. Though there's not much information to be found about this for the moment. On Tony Pearson's 'Inside System Storage' blog I read the following : "IBM has taken the work and worry out by having intelligence in DB2 to optimize what gets placed on SSD to get the most performance improvement". I'll definitely come back to this as soon as I can share more information about how this is done.

Planning
Not everything is available immediately and there are also restrictions as to what can be field installed. Here's an overview of planned availability dates :

March 6, 2009
Plant and field installation:
* 1 TB 7,200 rpm Serial ATA (SATA) drive sets
* Intelligent Write Caching
* Full Disk Encryption drive sets
Plant installation only:
* Full Disk Encryption drive set support (feature number 1751)

April 24, 2009
Plant and field installation:
* Remote Pair FlashCopy
Plant installation only:
* Solid State Drives (SSD)

Next to the DS8000 announcements, there were other important announcements too this week like e.g. 'IBM Tivoli Storage Manager V6.1 (ZP09-0004)', a preview of 'IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center family (ZA09-0007)', 'IBM Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager for z/OS V1.0 (ZP09-0022)' and a preview of 'IBM GDPS V3.6 (ZA09-0009)'.
I'll surely tell you more about some of these in my next posts.

Update : For more information on these Tivoli products, I would like to refer to Tony Pearson's post on his Inside System Storage Blog where he gives a very adequate description of these products.

BT : GSE Working Group events

For those not familiar with the blog. I use 'BT' for 'Belgian Topic' similar to e.g. 'OT' which is often used for 'Off Topic'.

As you can see on the logo Guide Share Europe (GSE) turns 50 in 2009. Or as we read on the GSE site

"In 1959, it was recognized by a small group of representatives from European companies using IBM equipment that the exchange of experiences and strategies, based on the various IBM uses, between members of similar business sectors, was of immeasurable advantage to the IBM user community.
The European organization of G.U.I.D.E. was formed and is still going strong 50 years later as GUIDE SHARE EUROPE (GSE)"

So I thought I might already give you an update on known dates for GSE Working Group Events. It's not a complete list yet, but the rest will follow in the agenda.

GSE z/OS Group : 18/03/2009, 17/06/2009, 16/09/2009 and 18/11/2009
GSE Storage Management Group : 12/03/2009 and 16/09/2009 (possible joint event with z/OS group)
GSE Enterprise Systems Security Group : 11/03/2009 (z/OS), 11/06/2009 (general), 11/09/2009 (z/OS) and 11/12/2009 (general)
GSE IMS and DB2 Group : 26/03/2009 (DB2), 24/09/2009 (DB2-SOA joint event), November 2009 (IMS)

And the 8th Regional Conference on "New Enterprise Data Center" is on April 23-24, 2009 in Spa.

Time to put your agendas up to date !

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 !

The CICS Guy

I saw this entry at The Master Terminal a couple of months ago about a new CICS blog : The CICS Guy by Steve Baugh. Well, I must say Steve is doing a wonderful job and I really enjoy reading his posts. This CICS guy definitely knows what he's talking about and brings lots of useful information from the field. There's also information about events, webcasts and yesterday even an ISPF post I couldn't resist sharing with you. It's now possible with the ISPF editor to copy one line to multiple target lines in one operation. I recall using this in Xedit years ago (though it might have been a macro as far as memory serves). How it's done ? Well, just get over to the CICS Guy.

The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2009

I just saw on Mainframe Update that the new Arcati Yearbook for 2009 is out. It has every ingredient the previous issues had too. There are some strategic articles on 'IBM z/OS VWLC software pricing optimization', 'The credit crunch: the impact on System z (aka mainframes)' and 'Staying on top of Enterprise Extender'.

We have the usual vendor directory listing vendors, consultants and service providers in the mainframe environment. The media guide points out some newsletters, magazines, user groups and information resources. I'm glad to see my blog is mentioned once again. It closes with some technical information, time tables and allthough no one should ever refer to them again the mips tables are also included.

And surely don't forget their pièce de résistance, the annual User Survey : 'The 2009 Mainframe User Survey - An analysis of the profile, plans, and priorities of mainframe users'.

As I always say : just check it out !

IBM System z Technical Conference in Brussels

There's an 'IBM System z Technical Conference' from 4 to 8 May, 2009. I know I'm well in advance mentioning this, but the sooner you know this, the sooner you can get into action to enroll. You can find all details over here.

Just a short introduction :

"This 4 1/2 day conference will help you boost your advanced mainframe skills or begin with mainframe basics, improve planning of hardware/software investments, test drive new technologies in hands-on labs, and see product demonstrations in the Solutions Center.

IBM System z™ Technical Conference, featuring z/OS®, z/VM®, z/VSE™, Linux® on System z™ and Storage, is the IBM conference devoted to you, the skilled professionals who support the mainframe environment. (...)

Technical experts from IBM System z™ development, System z customers, and the community of independent software vendor (ISV) providers will share their experience and expertise for a memorable week of technical education. More than 200 sessions cover technology topics and new product advances".

Who should attend ?

• Mainframe (z/OS, z/VSE, z/VM) programmers, system administrators, technical support managers
• Linux professionals who want to add mainframe skills
• Performance analysts, managers, data center managers
• Hardware or capacity planners who want to learn how to master, manage and exploit information
• Anyone who plans to implement, manage, or operate z/OS, z/VM, and Linux on the IBM System z

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.

T3 files antitrust complaint against IBM in Europe

PSI was taken over by IBM last year and T3 didn't seem to take that much action, but that has changed now. The European Commission already tackled another giant (Microsoft) because they sold their Media Player together with Windows. Now there's another round about selling Internet Explorer together with Windows and so once again establishing a monopoly.

It seems like T3 took an example from those actions by the European Commission and it now files an antitrust complaint against IBM. T3 was together with CSI the main distributor of FLEX-ES and it also developed its Liberty Server based on PSI technology. As we all know, IBM decided not to license its operating system to PSI or to Fundamental Software any longer. After the take-over of PSI, T3 was the only remaining competitor.

I'm really curious how this will turn out, though we already know this might take some (read : considerable) time.

Some more information

• The T3 Press Release
• CNET News : T3 files antitrust complaint against IBM in Europe
• PC World : IBM Could Face Mainframe Antitrust Investigation in Europe
• Z24 : Ook IBM kan borst nat maken (Dutch)
• Data News : Naast Microsoft ook IBM in de Europese tang ? (Dutch)

Without any doubt : to be continued !

General Price Action on System z

Here's the annual general price action for mainframe: 'General Price Action on System z, eServer zSeries and S/390 Software Program Products (ZA09-1001)'.Usually this announcement comes in April and becomes effective in July, so we're three months early this year. Crisis everywhere ?
It affects a range of MLC software. Some products like z/OS can have a price increase between 0% and 3%, others will have an increase between 0% and 5%. Here IBM seems to make a distinction between supported and end-of-support versions of software. E.g. DB2 9 and DB2 V8 are in the first series, DB2 V7 is in the second series. Time to move on to supported versions I'd say.
For the detailed lists, check out the announcement itself.

Webcast : Accelerate your Migration to z/OS V1.10!

Hi, I finally made it back to Blogland. As we're only in the first weeks of the first quarter, it's already been a busy week. Let's hope that's a good sign.
So, I'm actually a bit late to bring this under your attention, but this afternoon (Europe) there's a webcast on migrating to z/OS by Marne Walle. Here's the content of the webcast :

Are you interested in installing z/OS V1.10? Or, maybe you are in the middle of your migration and you need some questions answered? This webcast will give you hints, tips, and best practices to help expedite your move to z/OS V1.10 and all the new functions it provides. (...)
Following a short introduction on what's new in this latest release of the operating system, this webcast will cover technical installation requirements for your z/OS V1.10 environment which can help jump start your migration. There will be time for a live Q&A where you can get your questions answered.
This session will be of interest to systems programmers and their managers who are planning their migration to z/OS V1.10. If you are running z/OS V1.8, it's time to move forward! IBM service for z/OS V1.8 will end September 30, 2009.

Further details :
Date: Thursday, January 15, 2009
Time: 8am PT (San Francisco Time), 11am ET (New York Time), 5pm CEST (Paris Time)
Duration: 60 minutes

Click here to registrate.

Happy New Year

Another eventful year's gone and we're on the verge of a new one. I'm off for a couple of days now, but if you're eager for some lecture, my 2008 Year Review is still there.

We don't know what 2009 will bring us but I surely wish every one the best for 2009 : A Happy New Year and good health to you and your family.



Thanks to all my readers for stopping by so regularly, to other bloggers for linking to me and to all those who gave me great feedback during 2008.

Some movies - Part 4

OK, here's the last one in the series. In fact it's a series of iSeries commercials, but specifically the first one reminds me of commercials I posted earlier : 'The Heist' and 'Taking back control with the mainframe'. It stays funny though.

Some movies - Part 3 - That recovery Thing ?

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