September, 2007
by Jane Shipman
The next meeting for Connecticut CMG will be on Friday, October 26, 2007, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cromwell, Connecticut. Continental Breakfast and a Buffet Luncheon are provided. Pre-registration is $55; on-site registration is $65.
We wish to thank BMC Software, Inc. for being our meeting sponsor and helping to keep down the price of admission to our CMG events.
We extend a warm welcome to all who wish to expand their knowledge and share their insights by attending this informative meeting. We especially welcome MeasureIT readers. If you have not attended a meeting of Computer Measurement Group in the past this would be a great opportunity to come and find out what CMG is all about.
We have planned a two track meeting in the morning with the following lineup of exceptional speakers and presentations on topics from mainframe, mid-range, data warehouse and security and a combined session in the afternoon for the presentation by Dr. Tom Bell. Dr. Bell's session is a unique opportunity to hear from a respected CMG contributor on his own experiences with "Capacity Planning for Retirement". After all, we have built our careers on helping others with planning for future resource consumption. Shouldn't we do the same for ourselves?
Nin Lei, IBM
"Survival Techniques for Deploying a Large Data Warehouse"
Building and operating a large data warehouse (TB+) requires techniques very different from OLTP systems. Different approaches of database design, data loading, query optimization, and performance tuning are necessary to make large data warehouse deployment successful. With the availability of zIIP processors, parallel queries can now run with less expensive hardware without increasing software cost. But how much workload redirection should be expected? What is the workload management strategy of concurrent queries? All these questions and more will be answered in this presentation, with material coming from large data warehouse studies.
Nin Lei is recognized as an expert in DB2 performance and database design with interests in Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), covering areas of database and application design/performance analysis. He is a frequent speaker at database and data warehouse conferences. He is currently a Certified Executive IT Specialist at the IBM System z Benchmark Center conducting customer studies. He drives performance analysis work for all projects, and he provides architectural guidance to customers for designing their applications to meet high performance and scalability requirements. He also advises customers in new technology exploitation issues in the areas of System z and database performance. He is a member of the IBM IT Specialist Certification Board.
Dima Seliverstov, BMC Software, Inc.
"Pros and Cons of Collecting Performance Data Using Agentless Technology"
Agentless data collection is a powerful technology which has its advantages and disadvantages. The variety of agentless implementations for Windows and UNIX will be discussed. The implementations considered are SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), WMI (Windows Management Interface), Windows Remote Registry, and WBEM (Web Based Enterprise Management). System performance metrics, availability, security and network issues will be discussed along with how to identify when the agentless monitoring component is installed as part of the operating system. The author will share his real world experience with Windows agentless technology. Dima Seliverstov is a Lead Software Developer with BMC Software, Inc. He has a Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Gail Reynolds, Aetna, Inc.
"Information Security Overview, a Survey of Domains"
What does information security mean to the performance professional? Need security mechanisms be the bane of the performance professional? Before you can judge or merely contemplate how security controls impact performance and capacity, you should understand the breadth, integration potential, and interplay of security. Information Security spans many areas. This presentation of high level security concepts and common implementations will provide insight. Overview topics include architecture, operations, access control, encryption, networks, process, and much more!
Gail Reynolds is currently an Information Security Architect at Aetna. She has held several positions within Aetna's Information Systems organization. Gail has presented at CA-World and currently runs Aetna's Technology Impact Briefing series. She holds the CISSP, ISSMP, ISSAP, and CISM industry security designations. In addition, Gail has two degrees from Yale University: a B.S. in Biology from Yale College and a M.F.S. (Master of Forest Science) from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Peter Enrico, Enterprise Performance Strategies, Inc.
"zIIPs and zAAPs - Understanding Transaction Flows and CPU Measurements"
Today's transactions on z/OS can run on zIIP or zAAP processors, as well as traditional general purpose processors. This session will discuss some typical transaction flows involving zIIP and zAAP processors and how the CPU time consumed is accumulated to the address space SMF 30, the processor SMF 70, and the WLM service class period SMF 72.3 records. Additional topics discussed will include dependent and independent enclaves, client SRBs, unmanaged threads, and other key concepts necessary to understand the interpretation of zIIP and zAAP CPU times.
Peter Enrico has strong and diverse experience with the IBM zArchitecture platform, and a solid background in z/OS, Workload Manager, J2EE, WebSphere, Web Services, e-business applications, application architecture, Parallel Sysplex, and z/OS UNIX System Services. He also has a good deal of experience with a variety of UNIX platforms, ERP applications, and distributed application architecture. He is known as someone that can explain complex computing concepts to wide audiences, including managers and executives, in an effective and easily understandable manner.
Dr. Thomas E. Bell
"Planning our Retirements"
As we age, many CMG Members are approaching retirement. We need to take actions for ourselves and our families to protect assets when our financial resiliency is reduced and our needs have evolved. However, effective planning for retirement is often deferred until "later" - after more urgent issues are addressed. Welcome to later.
What should you do about health insurance and life insurance? How much money will you need, and how reasonable is it to get that much? What will be the effects of demographics (e.g., the baby boom, increased longevity) and probable government responses? If you sell your house, where should you live? Will taxes destroy you, and what reasonable plans should you make to cope with them? Should you just hand over your assets to that nice young financial planner and hope for the best? By the time we're about 40 or 45 we need to implement plans, especially because demographic shifts promise to put real burdens on people who haven't retired by 2011.
Tom Bell will describe some of his realizations since his retirement 21 months ago -- along with research he has done to improve his coping abilities.
Tom Bell received his Ph.D. in Management from UCLA in 1968. Since then he has focused on the management of computing and information systems. In 1975 his work was recognized by CMG when he received the A.A. Michelson award. He was Treasurer of the ACM's SIGMetrics and has served many terms on the CMG Board of Directors. In addition, he was elected Treasurer and, subsequently, Secretary, of CMG. He has written extensively and presented to professional organizations both inside and outside the US. For the last 27 years he has run his own consulting business. Upon reaching his 65th birthday, he retired from active consulting. However, he hasn't been able to take much vacation time. Retirement is just too time-consuming.
For more information or to register contact:
Jane Shipman
Publicity Chair
Connecticut CMG
860-704-8145
Or go to the Connecticut CMG WEB site: regions.cmg.org/regions/ctcmg/