With the final zAcademy webinar of the year concluded, I wanted to take the opportunity, as one does this time of year, to reflect on the webinars that resonated most with our mainframe audience of performance and capacity enthusiasts. Because who doesn’t love a good countdown list?
Since 2020, IntelliMagic zAcademy has offered free, educational z/OS webinars to the mainframe community. In 2022, we reached our 40th webinar and covered topics from Network Encryption to WLM policy management, application profiling, Db2 optimization, and much more. But a top-5 countdown list can only have five.
The Top 5 IntelliMagic zAcademy webinars of 2022, as decided by our audience, are:
#5 How long is too long? Multi-period Service Classes
Number 5 on the list is an entry from John Baker’s famous “valuable for anyone” sessions, this time covering service class duration.
Beginning with a detailed explanation of weighted Service Units and quickly switching gears to the implications of z/OS 2.5 making the previously variable coefficients fixed, this session covers everything you need to know about duration and service classes.
#4) Use Cases Leveraging Db2 Accounting Data to Optimize Your Environment
Numerous zAcademy sessions have touched on the struggles performance analysts and teams face taking overly voluminous RMF/SMF data and extracting practical insights from it. Number 4 in our list continues this trend by diving deep into Db2 Accounting data. Sally Mir and Todd Havekost used numerous real life examples of numerous sites extracting Db2 Accounting Data and using it for practical benefits such as
- Getting to the bottom of your DDF workloads
- Isolating and resolve RID issues to enhance availability and performance
- Optimizing DBATs
- Understanding and deciphering suspension times
- SQL tuning changes
#3) Insights into New XCF Path Usage Statistics
Frank Kyne, President of Watson and Walker, joined Todd Havekost in our number 3 webinar on the list to discuss some of their key findings related to XCF Path Usage Statistics data.
XCF Transport Class simplification functionality was implemented in z/OS 2.4, with an objective to eliminate the need for separately managed transport classes at most sites. However, to get the best value from this new capability, installations should ensure that their XCF signaling resources are consistent with XCF’s new approach.
In this webinar Frank and Todd provided a better understanding of how XCF operates in general, tips about how to optimize your environment for the new paradigm, and information about what can be learned from the new Path Usage RMF 74.2 metrics. All-in-all a must watch for anyone dealing with XCF.
#2) zHyperLink Read Performance & Lessons Learned
zHyperLink Express was announced by IBM in September 2017, providing up to 10x better response times in read cache hits, but the roll out to production has been slower than most new interface technologies on the mainframe given that it’s an adjunct and not a replacement to FICON.
Coming in at number 2 on our list, Joe Hyde joined zAcademy to present recent Db2 production data which highlighted the speed of zHyperLink read I/Os.
As Joe mentioned online, familiarity with the zHyperLink statistics will help you track and verify the performance benefits of this technology and help justify the investment needed to incorporate the zHyperLink technology in your I/T environments. Anyone considering implementing or with zHyperLink already implemented are highly encouraged to watch this recording – which almost made it to our number 1 spot this year.
#1) From CPU MF Counters to z16 Invoices: Thoughts on the Impact of Processor Cache Measurements
Presented by IntelliMagic founder, Dr. Gilbert Houtekamer, and John Baker, this webinar began as curiosity on the part of Dr. Houtekamer looking into the new processor cache designs of the z16 and ending with a blowout session diving into the many insights provided by CPU Measurement Facility, RNI, and processor cache metrics.
Looking Towards 2023
If you haven’t yet watched any of the live sessions or recordings of this year’s zAcademy sessions, or if you’re a super-learner that signs up for every session, remember that all zAcademy webinars and recordings – past and future – can be accessed at www.intellimagic.com/zacademy/
IntelliMagic zAcademy will continue into 2023 with exciting insights and deep dives into several new areas of the z/OS mainframe. If you had a favorite session you wanted to tell us about, had questions about any of the material you saw, or if you have a recommendation on a topic you want us to cover in the future, send us a note at info@intellimagic.com, and we’ll get back to you!
Thanks for watching – tune in next year!
This article's author
Morgan Oats Share this blog
Related Resources
A Mainframe Roundtable: The Leaders | IntelliMagic zAcademy
Join industry leaders as they discuss the evolution of mainframes, sharing personal experiences, challenges, and future insights, along with practical advice from their careers in the Z ecosystem.
Integrating Mainframe Resource Consumption into the Business | IntelliMagic zAcademy
Discover how to apply FinOps in the mainframe ecosystem to better align IT resources with business objectives, optimizing costs and decisions.
The Total Economic Impact of IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS
Discover the benefits of IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS. Watch the webinar for insights on cost savings, risk reduction, and ROI.
Book a Demo or Connect With an Expert
Discuss your technical or sales-related questions with our mainframe experts today