October, 2009
by Dave Thorn
After taking the relatively cool summer off, Philadelphia CMG reconvened on September 25 for a star-studded meeting. We had four high-quality presentations and members responded to the program, producing a well-attended meeting.
Steve Guendert of Brocade began the program with his presentation Using Control Unit Port (CUP) and the RMF 74-7 Record for Managing FICON Performance. Steve explained the importance of CUP, a holdover from ESCON Directors, and how to use it and the RMF 74-7 record. Steve, unfortunately, will be unable to attend CMG'09 due to upcoming elbow surgery, and we'll miss his expertise and wish him a speedy recovery.
Our Featured Vendor was Neon Enterprise Software. Craig Mullins explained their zPrime product, which expands the potential use of mainframe specialty processors. Its unique function and capabilities resulted in a very interesting question and answer session.
Next, former CMG Treasurer Claire Cates from SAS presented Threads - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The rate of processor speed increase has begun to slow, and the best way to continue performance improvements is to take advantage of the now commonplace multi-core and multi-processor machines. Claire cautioned that to do this, applications must be threaded, and that process can actually degrade performance if not done carefully.
After lunch, Bob Rogers of IBM brought our mainframe attendees lots of updates to think about. His session, Getting the Most From z10 With the Latest Releases of z/OS, explained that while the z10 processor line is faster than its predecessors, there is additional value provided that is unlocked by the latest z/OS releases, including Automatic StandAlone Dump and re-IPL, Hiperdispatch, Large Page Support, Data Prefetch, and Hardware Instrumentation.
Just as our brains were nearing 100% utilization, CMG Vice President Frank Bereznay presented Forecasting Data Center Power Requirements: Tips From the Trenches. This interesting session detailed Frank's pursuit of measuring and forecasting data center power consumption. This can be very important as equipment is moved in and out of service. Frank showed how power usage profiles were developed for various equipment types, as well as measurement techniques and reporting formats.
One of PHILACMG's best meetings came to a close at 3:00pm and we still had a little late September sunshine to enjoy. A great day with great sessions...does it get better than this?