Recapping SHARE St. Louis

After a busy and exciting week in St. Louis, another successful SHARE conference is in the books. IntelliMagic presented seven sessions surrounding z/OS application performance topics and enjoyed meeting IT professionals and industry leaders dedicated to ensuring optimal z/OS performance and application availability and promoting the modernization of the mainframe platform.

IntelliMagic continues to be a proud Gold Premier sponsor of SHARE, the best place to learn about the latest enterprise IT topics from professionals and industry leaders.

For those of you who made it out to St. Louis, hopefully you were able to attend some of our technical sessions, but if not, (and for those who were unable to attend) we have compiled all of our presentations for you to review at your convenience.

What’s New in Artificial Intelligence for SMF and RMF/CMF Analysis

In this Lunch & Learn we discussed how smart algorithms can augment human analysts to overcome today’s challenges to efficiently deliver on Application SLA’s from the z/OS infrastructure. We covered trends seen in both large and small mainframe sites which are taking root in the mainstream. Analysis topics included CPU and associated systems components, MLC, Network, Disk & Replication, and Virtual Tape.

Watch our webinar: 2018 RMS/SMF Analytics – Status & Predictions

CICS & Db2 Performance Analytics Based on SMF Data

In this session we demonstrated the benefits of modernizing how you understand and leverage your SMF data for CICS and Db2 performance analysis. We highlighted how the IntelliMagic approach, with automatic health assessments and dashboard technology, identifies potential performance and availability issues before they impact production. The power of context-sensitive drilldowns to provide enhanced visibility and facilitate effective analysis was also showcased.

Watch our webinar: 2018 RMS/SMF Analytics – Status & Predictions

zHyperLink: The Holy Grail of Mainframe I/O

With the z14 processor, IBM introduced zHyperLink™, a new way to connect processors and storage, providing very low latency I/O operations. This new technology comes with a set of promises and restrictions that will cause you to rethink the design of your storage and replication infrastructure.

Attendees of this session gained an understanding of the potential benefits and implications of this revolutionary change to mainframe I/O, helping them to determine how zHyperLink fits in the future roadmap for their environments.

Watch our webinar: zHyperLink: The Holy Grail of Mainframe IO

More Performance and Capacity Predictability out of RMF and SMF

The good news is that SMF and RMF/CMF are the most robust machine-generated operations data in the data center. The problem is in how hard it is to correlate and understand all the data and what it really means for the performance and cost-efficiency of your workloads on your specific z/OS infrastructure configuration.

This session explored new approaches to analyzing the operational data and in particular how predictability can be dramatically affected with an additional type of artificial intelligence automatically applied to the data.

Watch our webinar: Predictive Analysis from RMF/SMF for Enhanced Performance & Capacity Planning

Performance and Capacity Insights for your Outsourced z/OS Mainframe

Outsourcing of z/OS mainframes is not uncommon, yet there are common application infrastructure performance, capacity, and cost-efficiency issues for the business that arise in outsourcing situations.

This panel session led by Brent Phillips of IntelliMagic, Chuck Hinkle of Edge Solutions & Consulting, and Cheryl Watson of Watson & Walker, explored these issues and the value to the business of automated application infrastructure performance analysis services.

Watch our webinar: Performance and Capacity Insights for your Outsourced z/OS Mainframe

Optimizing Processor Cache on z13 and z14 Processors

Delivered capacity on z13 and z14 processors is more dependent than ever before on effective utilization of processor cache. Since it is likely that one-third to more than half of your total CPU cycles are spent waiting for data to be staged into level 1 processor cache, it is critical to understand and have visibility into this significant component of your CPU consumption.

Attendees of this session learned how to interpret the SMF 113 metrics to optimize your environment and potentially reduce CPU and thus MLC software expense. Based on the analysis of multiple z14 case studies, attendees gained an understanding of what they can expect from a z14 migration in their environments, whether to anticipate their capacity increase to be at the upper or lower end of the published ranges.

Overall, the presentation incorporated findings and case studies gleaned from reviewing detailed processor cache data from more than 50 sites across 5 countries. This core content has recently been recognized with SHARE Best Session and CMG Best Paper awards.

Watch our webinar: Achieving CPU (& MLC) Savings on z13 and z14 Processors

DevOps: Agile z/OS Application Infrastructure Performance Testing

The z/OS platform excels at efficiently executing transactions and is a critical component for many business applications. Yet application development teams rarely understand how application program changes impact the performance and cost efficiency of the underlying z/OS infrastructure.

This session examined the historical reasons why the performance and financial cost impact on the z/OS infrastructure has been difficult to test in DevOps organizations. We also discussed how artificial intelligence can significantly improve release quality as it relates to the z/OS infrastructure’s ability to efficiently deliver the service levels required by specific applications.

Watch our webinar: Easy z/OS Application Performance Testing from the Infrastructure Perspective