SPARTA News

April 2021

SPARTA President’s Corner

contributed by Randy Springs

For our April meeting, the online speaker will be our own Ed Webb, retired, speaking on the recent SHARE 2021 Virtual Summit and what sessions sparked his interest or curiosity.

Please join your colleagues at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 6, on Zoom. Watch for meeting connection information coming your way soon.

Randy Springs
Truist

Future Speakers

(subject to change)

Apr. 6, 2021 - SHARE 2021 Virtual Summit Report by Ed Webb of SPARTA

May 4, 2021 - eventACTION™ z/OS Systems Management by Peter Sharma of Action Software

We need ideas and volunteers for future speakers. Presentations don’t have to be fancy, just informative and interesting. Even a 5 or 10 minute talk can start an interesting interaction. Contact Ron Pimblett by phone as noted below.

2020-2021 SPARTA

Board of Directors

Randy Springs - President

Truist                  (919) 745-5241

3200 Beechleaf Court, Suite 300

Raleigh, NC 27604

Ron Pimblett - Vice President

MDI Data Systems

Land line 613 599 6970

Mobile 613 981 6919

190 Guelph Private

Kanata, ON K2T 0J7

Chris Blackshire - Secretary

Retired (Dell, Perot Systems, Nortel)  (919) nnn-nnnn

street

Durham, NC 27713

Randy Springs - (Acting) Treasurer

BB&T                  (919) 745-5241

see Randy

Springs earlier

Ed Webb -  Communications Director

Retired (SAS Institute Inc.)  (919) nnn-nnnn

street

Apex, NC 27523

Mike Lockey -  Web Master

Guilford Co. Information Services  336-641-6235

201 N. Eugene St.

Greensboro, NC 27401

Meetings

Coronavirus Change: All meetings for the foreseeable future will be held online via the Zoom App. The link to meeting is sent to SPARTA Mailing list within 24 hours of the meeting time for security reasons. Stay safe.

Meetings are scheduled for the first Tuesday evening of each month (except no meeting in January), with optional dinner at 6:15 p.m. and the meeting beginning at 7:00 p.m.

These monthly meetings usually are held at LabCorp’s Center for Molecular Biology and Pathology (CMBP) near the Research Triangle Park (see last page). Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto T.W. Alexander Drive. Go about a mile or so. Then turn right into LabCorp complex and turn Left to the CMBP Building (1912 T.W. Alexander Drive). In the lobby, sign in as a visitor to see Bill Johnson. Bill will escort you to the conference room.

Call for Articles

If you have any ideas for speakers, presentations, newsletter articles, or are interested in taking part in a presentation, PLEASE contact one of the Board of Directors with your suggestions.

Newsletter e-Mailings

The SPARTA policy is to e-mail a monthly notice to our SPARTA-RTP Group. The newsletter is posted to the website about five (5) days before each meeting so you can prepare. The SPARTA-RTP Group is maintained by Chris Blackshire; if you have corrections or problems receiving your meeting notice, contact Chris at chrisbl@nc.rr.com.

March 2021 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V501 (dated March 4, 2021) are available from www.cbttape.org.

If you need help obtaining one or more files, contact Ed Webb (see Board of Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the March 2, 2021 Meeting

• The meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Randy Springs, the SPARTA President.

• This eleventh (April 2020 to March 2021) virtual SPARTA meeting was held via the Zoom Software.

• Sixteen (16) people were present at the virtual meeting.

• The business portion of the meeting followed after the presentation.

• For the Roundtable, everyone introduced themselves, told where they worked, talked about working from home, and briefly described their job functions and what they've been doing at work and home.

OLD BUSINESS

• The minutes of the February 2, 2021 meeting as published in the March 2021 Newsletter were approved.

• The February 28, 2021 Treasurer's report (no April-February income or expenses) as published in the March 2021 Newsletter was approved. As of February 28, 2021, the current balance was $1,489.66.

• Call For Articles: Articles are needed for this newsletter. If you would like to write an article for this newsletter, please contact Ed Webb. Keep in mind that you don't really need to write the article, it can be an article that you read that you would like to share with the membership.

• The SPARTA Web page is available. To access the SPARTA Web page, point your Web browser to this site: http://www.spartanc.org. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web page to Mike Lockey. Be sure to check the Web page every once in a while to see any new or changed information.

• 2021 meeting dates, Future Speakers and Topics (subject to change based on internal politics, budget, the weather):

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett.

• The next SPARTA monthly meeting will be held virtually on Tuesday, April 6, 2021.

• The 2021 membership fee is due ($30) starting in February 2021. Please pay Randy Springs. [See New Business for a change.]

• Thanks to Randy Springs for virtually hosting the meeting via Zoom.

• There are currently 95 people on the SPARTA e-mail distribution list.

• Send any e-mail address changes to Chris Blackshire so he can update the SPARTA distribution List. The SPARTA meeting notices are being sent via a simple distribution list maintained by Chris.

• Randy Springs is looking for a new Treasurer volunteer. He projects about 2 hours per month is needed.
- The treasurer position duties are:
- - Collect dues and pay expenses at each monthly meeting.
- - Deposit income at the Truist bank monthly.
- - Make an updated monthly Excel income-expense list for the monthly newsletter.
- - Give a Treasurer report at each meeting.
- - One Time: Be added to the checking account authorization.
- Contact Randy Springs if you are interested.

• LabCorp Meeting Place Update: no update needed from Bill Johnson.

NEW BUSINESS

• Motion was made, seconded, and passed to suspend the 2021 SPARTA dues.

• The Business portion of the meeting ended about 9:00 P.M. (And the meeting also ended at 9:00 p.m.)

• Presentation Topic: Boost the Value You Derive from CICS, Db2, and MQ Data

by Todd Havekost, Senior Performance Consultant, and John Baker, Senior Consultant, at IntelliMagic

AGENDA
• Introduction
• Deriving Value from CICS Data (SMF Records 110.1, 110.2)
• Deriving Value from Db2 Data (100, 101)
• Deriving Value from MQ Data (115, 116)

• Presentation Access - See Below for a full outline of the presentation. See the SPARTA webpage for the complete presentation.

• Contact Info:
Speaker: Todd Havekost
IntelliMagic
Senior z/OS Performance Consultant
Email: todd.havekost@intellimagic.com

Speaker: John Baker
IntelliMagic
Senior Consultant
Email: john.baker@intellimagic.com

Brent Phillips
Managing Director of IntelliMagic in the Americas
Office: 1-817-680-0499
Email: brent.phillips@intellimagic.com
Website: https://www.intellimagic.com

• The March 2, 2021 monthly meeting ended about 9:00 P.M.

Treasurer’s Report for March 2021

contributed by Randy Springs

The balance in the account is $1489.66 as of March 31, 2021.

SPARTA Financial Report
4/01/2020 through 03/31/2021

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2021

contributed by Chris Blackshire

Apr 6, 2021 - BarBQ (Ed Webb speaker topic SHARE 136)
May 4, 2021 - Pizza
June 1, 2021 - Chicken
June 29, 2021 (Special date) - Subs (July 5 holiday is in the July 6 week)
Aug 3, 2021 - BarBQ (SHARE 137, August 08-13, 2021)
Aug 31, 2021 (Special date) - Pizza (Labor Day holiday is Monday Sept 6) - Speaker Ed Webb, topic SHARE 137
Oct 5, 2021 - Chicken
Nov 2, 2021 - Subs
Dec 7, 2021 - BarBQ
Jan 4, 2022 - No meeting!

Reminder: IBM Software Electronic Delivery Change - At the end of April!

contributed By Ed Webb

Marna Walle of IBM, and a recent SPARTA presenter, posted this SHARE blog entry on Wednesday, January 27, 2021, notifying us about critical changes with IBM Software Delivery on Friday, April 30, 2021.

" This should be read by all IBM customers that download software (products and service) to see if they are impacted, and for possible changes.

On April 30, 2021, IBM is planning to remove support for Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 and TLS 1.1 from the IBM software download servers. The affected servers are used for downloading files for the following z/OS software offerings:

* PTFs and HOLDDATA ordered using the SMP/E RECEIVE ORDER command
* PTFs ordered using Shopz
* PTFs ordered using ServiceLink
* Products in ServerPac and CBPDO offerings ordered using Shopz
* Products in CustomPac offerings "

If you use FTPS to drive the software download from your IBM Z mainframe, you are affected. Shops that use HTTPS are not affected. For FTPS users, look at the TLSMECHANISM statement in your FTP.DATA file. If it specifies ATTLS, no worries. But if, like mine, it reads FTP, act now to make the change to ATTLS or HTTPS. To find out more about what's happening and how to make the changes, read Marna's article and follow the links she provides in this Marna's Musings blog entry at SHARE.org.

SHARE 2021 Virtual Summit Best Sessions Announced! And Available!

contributed By Ed Webb

"SHARE is proud to congratulate the following technical session presenters and their organizations for receiving the highest attendee ratings from SHARE Virtual Winter Summit 2021.

The Best Session Awards are given to the highest-rated sessions at each SHARE technical event. The awards are based on the results from the session evaluations attendees are asked to complete at the end of each session. To win an award, a session must be the highest-rated session in the sponsoring program, have at least 15 session evaluations returned, receive a 90% or better overall rating and have not won for the same session in the past two years. Congratulations to our winners!

Application Architecture Development Program

Vendor Session
27260: CICS Health Check- What is Involved? Speaker: Gene Hudders
 Project Manager: Glenn Schneck, CICS Project

Vendor Session
27525: ABCs of WebSphere Liberty Speaker: Gary Picher
 Project Manager: Brian Jagos, ADI Project

Enterprise Data Center Program

Vendor Session
27958: Security Opening-Common Holes and a Deep Dive into the Top Prevalent Vulnerabilities that Impact zOS and all ESMs 
Speaker: Brian Marshall

Project Manager: Jerry Seefeldt, Security and Compliance Project

Vendor Session
27959: Security Opening-Common Holes and a Deep Dive into the Top Prevalent Vulnerabilities that Impact zOS and all ESMs
 Speakers: Robert Hansel

Project Manager: Jerry Seefeldt, Security and Compliance Project

Vendor Session
27620: Setting the Stage for Innovation
Speakers: Larry England

Project Manager: Ellis Allen Holman, Professional Development Project

Enterprise-Wide Program

User Session
27375: DevOps: The Theory Behind the Practice
Speaker: Lisa Fellows

Project Manager: Jerry Edgington, DevOps in the Enterprise Project

Linux & VM Program

User Session
27331: Bare Metal z15 to Cloud in Two Days Speaker: Rick Barlow

Project Manager: Rich Smrcina. VM Project

MVS Program

Vendor Session
27518: Hidden Treasures in z/OS (aka Bit Bucket x'3C') Speaker: Edward Jaffe

Project Manager: James Lund, MVS Core Technologies Project

IBM Session
27519: Hidden Treasures in z/OS (aka Bit Bucket x'3C') Speaker: Thomas Conley
Project Manager: James Lund, MVS Core Technologies Project

Vendor Session
27520: Hidden Treasures in z/OS (aka Bit Bucket x'3C')
Speaker: Lionel Dyck

Project Manager: James Lund, MVS Core Technologies Project

User Session
27273: ISPF is Dead! Long Live ISPF! 2020 Edition
Speaker: Thomas Conley

Project Manager: James Lund, MVS Core Technologies Project"

For the low price of $299 for members and $399 for non-members, "you can still purchase the recordings for access to the full on-demand library until June 30, 2021. "

Act now to review the technical agenda and Register at SHARE.org.

Spotlighting Women in IT

Contributed by Ed Webb

Have you heard of Ada Lovelace, known as the first programmer, or Katherine Johnson, one of NASA's "Hidden Figures"? There are many more women in IT who have or are making a big contribution to computing.

Read this recent SHARE blog interview of SHARE women who talk about their computing experiences. And check out the list of women in the image near the end of the blog. Many I had not heard of or remembered - use wikipedia to learn more about each one.

Humor

Wit and Wisdom continued

contributed by Ed Webb

Why worry about the things you cannot control and why worry about the things you can control?
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.
Humanity is an ocean: if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, April 6, 2021

7 p.m.

Location: Online

Information about access to our online meeting will be sent to our e-mail list by Tuesday, April 6.

Free Food before meeting: Your Food at Your Home

Program:

SHARE 2021 Virtual Summit - A Different Kind of SHARE

Speaker: Ed Webb (Retired)

SPARTA Corporate Sponsors:

March 2021 Presentation outline

• Presentation Topic: Boost the Value You Derive from CICS, Db2, and MQ Data

by Todd Havekost, Senior Performance Consultant, and John Baker, Senior Consultant, at IntelliMagic

AGENDA
• Introduction
• Deriving Value from CICS Data (SMF Records 110.1, 110.2)
• Deriving Value from Db2 Data (100, 101)
• Deriving Value from MQ Data (115, 116)

• Introduction
- Todd Havekost, 40 years in IT career in z/OS system performance
- John Baker, over 25 years in z/OS system and application performance

• Challenges Deriving Value from SMF Data
- Primarily used in reactive manner
- Siloed tooling across disciplines
- Focused analysis despite massive data volumes
- Declining expertise with retirements of tenured staff

• Ways to Boost Value Derived from SMF Data
- Primarily used in reactive manner
- - Proactive identification of potential risks
- Siloed tooling across disciplines
- - Intuitive integrated views of data promotes collaboration
- Focused analysis despite massive data volumes
- - Dynamic navigation to quickly focus on desired subset of data
- Declining expertise with retirements of tenured staff
- - Expedite bringing less-experienced staff up to speed

• Deriving Value from CICS Data - (SMF 110.1, 110.2)

• CICS Transaction Reporting
- Transaction level data produced by CICS Monitoring Facility (SMF 110.1)
- 370+ fields, including approximately 100 timing “buckets”
- Summarize data into configurable “RMF like” intervals
- Flexible GUI with functionality (drill-downs, filters, customization) to 
quickly and effectively analyze massive volume of data

• CICS Statistics Health Assessments
- Views direct your attention to potential issues
- Metrics rated for health, based on best practices
- Summarized by “CICS Group”, drilldowns by region
- Examples include:
- - MAXTASKS
- - Short on Storage
- - Max QR TCB % Busy
- - Waits for VSAM File or LSR Pool Strings
- - Terminal Transmission Errors
- - Enqueue Wait Time

• Deriving Value from CICS Data (Live Demo)

• Deriving Value from Db2 Data - (SMF 100, 101)

• Db2 Statistics Reporting
- Db2 Statistics records (SMF 100) provide data at the Db2 member
(and buffer pool if applicable) level
- Summarize data into configurable “RMF like” intervals
- Flexible GUI with functionality (drill-downs, filters, customization)
to quickly and effectively analyze large volume of data

• Db2 Statistics Health Assessments
- Views direct your attention to potential issues
- 80+ metrics rated for health, based on best practices
- Summarized by DSG, drilldowns by member, buffer pool size and number
- Examples include:
- - Buffer Pools and GBPs
- - Locks and Latches
- - Logging
- - Parallelism

• Db2 Accounting Reporting
- Db2 Accounting records (SMF 101) provide thread (or “transaction”) level data
- Summarize data by key criteria into “RMF like” intervals
- Flexible GUI with functionality (drill-downs, filters, customization) to quickly and effectively analyze massive quantity of data

• Db2 Accounting Data – Summarization
- Plan data summarized by:
- - Sysid
- - Data sharing group name
- - Db2 member name
- - Plan name
- - Connection type
- - Correlation name
- - Authorization ID
- Package data summarized by:
- - Sysid / DSG / Member
- - Plan name
- - Connection type
- - Correlation name
- - Authorization ID
- - Package collection ID
- - Program name
- - Consistency token (version)

• Class 1, 2 and 3 Plan Accounting Data
- Transaction response time
- Class 1: Inside, Time outside Db2, Time inside Db2, Outside, Inside
- Class 2: CPU time (GCP and zIIP), Waiting time
- Class 3: Lock, I/O, Not accounted time

- Class 1 is application perspective from Db2 thread creation to termination
- Class 2 provides Db2 elapsed and CPU time (Class 7 for package)
- Class 3 provides wait reasons within Db2 (Class 8 for package)

• Deriving Value from Db2 Data (Live Demo)

• Deriving Value from MQ Data (SMF 115, 116)

• MQ SMF Data
- MQ Statistics (SMF 115)
- - Data at the queue manager and buffer pool levels
- - Examples: message request rates, logging data, buffer management
- MQ Accounting (SMF 116)
- - Detailed task level data including queue name, connection type, address space name
- - Examples: CPU time, elapsed times by wait factors, message lengths

• Unique Challenges Deriving Value from MQ Data
- Overall visibility into MQ data
- - Has not typically been focus of in-house developed reporting
- - Vendor tooling not as mature
- “Heavy” MQ 116 Accounting data
- - Commonly not continuously generated due to concerns about data volume and CPU overhead
- - - Concerns may be overstated
- - - May also be influenced by lack of reporting visibility
- - Perhaps start by generating periodically to establish baseline

• MQ Statistics Reporting
- MQ Statistics records (SMF 115) provide data at the queue manager (and buffer pool) level
- MQ generates statistics data at intervals specified by STATINT attribute (default is 30 minutes)
- - Records are produced at SMF global accounting interval if STATINT=0 is specified

• MQ Statistics Health Assessments
- Views direct your attention to potential issues
- 30+ metrics rated for health, based on best practices
- Assessed by queue manager and buffer pool
- Examples include:
- - Buffer Manager
- - - Buffer pool utilizations
- - - Write thresholds reached
- - Log Manager
- - - Waits for buffers
- - - Checkpoint frequencies
- - Storage Manager
- - - Contractions
- - - Short on storage

• MQ Accounting Reporting
- MQ Accounting records (SMF 116) provide detailed data for each task, at the thread and queue level
- Summarize data by key criteria into “RMF like” intervals
- Flexible GUI with functionality (drill-downs, filters, customization) to quickly and effectively analyze massive quantity of data

• MQ Accounting Data – Summarization
- Sysplex ID
- System ID
- Queue manager
- Queue name
- Buffer pool number
- Page set
- Connection type
- Connection name (address space)
- CICS transaction ID
- IMS PSB
- Authorization ID
- User ID

• Deriving Value from MQ Data (Live Demo)

• Limitations of Static Reporting Solutions

• Example – Assessing Metrics to Identify Issues
- Static reports
- - 120 CICS regions x 15 metrics = 1800 charts
- - Requires manual analysis of all charts to proactively identify issues
- Contrast with programmatic assessment using built-in z/OS-specific subject matter expertise
- - Identify in single view opportunities that may warrant analysis

• Example – CICS Response Time Analysis
- Static reports
- - “Top 10” transactions (probably want more) x 4 systems x 7 CICS regions x 5 response categories = 1400 reports
- Analysis leveraging context-sensitive drilldowns
- - 4 clicks
- Context-sensitive drilldown capabilities are especially helpful in deriving value from massive quantities of data

• Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter (Reprint)
- “Learning from SMF” series began with issue 2020 No. 1 (published April 2020)
- First article covered MQ Statistics (SMF 115)
- Second article covered MQ Accounting (SMF 116)
- Current series of articles on Enterprise Consumption reporting and tuning
- Subscribe to our newsletter and receive a reprint of this Tuning Letter.

• Summary

• How IntelliMagic Vision Enhances Analysis
- RMF/SMF Validated, Normalized, Correlated, Assessed, Rated

1. Intelligent Analysis
- Contextual analysis - metrics auto-assessed with expert knowledge of infrastructure capabilities and best practices
- Statistical analysis - identify important changes, trends
- Application grouping-for easy analysis by application of shared infrastructure resources

2. Predictive and Prescriptive Views
- See performance bottlenecks developing
- Sooner than real-time views of problems
- See cost inefficiency drivers
- Built in reasons and recommendations
- Faster resolution of problems

3. Interactive Navigation through the Data
- Intelligent navigation and drill-downs
- High level to detailed views in a few clicks
- Click to customize – no report writing
- Web GUI – easy collaboration/sharing
- Physical and logical metric correlation

4. Flexible Access and Integration
- Delivery via Software as a Service or on-premise
- Integrate derived intelligence with Splunk or other platforms
- Fractional access to human perf/cap experts to fill gaps

The virtual presentation ended about 8:45 PM followed by the business meeting.