My esteemed colleague, Wayne Bucek of IBM, has posted an excellent video on Youtube about APM and the mainframe.
IBMzManage
This blog is focused on IBM zManage technology with an emphasis on IBM OMEGAMON monitoring, Automation, Operational Analytics, and more...
APM. What is it and what is it all about?
At its most basic, Application Performance Management (APM) is the monitoring and management of the performance and availability of applications. APM is about the correlation of monitoring and management and translating that process into something that has relevance to the business application.
Essential aspects of any APM solution include what termed end-user experience monitoring (i.e. response time), end to end transaction tracking (preferably dynamic tracking), transaction profiling, baseline analysis, and reporting. IBM has an APM offering (called, guess what, IBM APM). IBM also partners with the big player in the APM space, AppDynamics.
IBM provides a component call IBM Z APM Connect. Think of Z APM Connect as a feed that sends z/OS specific information into the AppDynamics APM solution. In the following example you see references to CICS, Db2, ZCEE, VSAM etc. It's the job of Z APM Connect to send that type of z/OS specific information to AppDynamics.
I will be presenting on z/OS and APM at the DFW zCouncil meeting on Nov 19th
FYI. I will be presenting on z/OS and APM at the DFW zCouncil meeting on Nov 19th. Here's the agenda below. It's not too late to register!
Here's a link to register: Register
9:00 am – 10:00 am: New Trend in Storage and Cloud Storage with Louis Hanna
- 10:00 am – 10:10 am: Break
- 10:10 am – 10:40 am: Date & Topics with Sharon Dodd & DFW z User Group Team
- 10:40 am – 11:40 am: How z/OS Fits into Your Application Performance Management (APM) Strategy with Ed Woods
- 11:40 am: Closing
Upcoming IBM Z Council meeting
In this session, you will be able to hear about the latest developments in IBM Z Hardware, Security and Management.
Here's the agenda:
9:15 AM Kickoff & Opening Remarks
9:30 AM Technical Overview of the New IBM z15 T02 and LinuxONE III LT2
Monte Bauman, IBM Z Champion
11:00 AM Break
11:30 AM IBM Data Privacy Passports
Michael Jordan, IBM Z Distinguished Engineer
12:30 PM Break
1:00 PM Automating using Ansible with z/OS
Kevin Hite, IBM Senior Technical Staff Member
Bryant Panyarachun, IBM Software Engineerr
2:00 PM Close
For more information and to register, here's a link: Event information
Have you heard about IBM IZSME?
IZSME requires Zowe 1.10 or higher and supports Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.Here's a link for more information on IZSME More about IZSME
Here's a quick screen shot of what IZSME looks like relative to the TEP.
What is this Zowe thing?
So the first question is, What is Zowe? This is straight from the Zowe.org web site:
"Zowe is an open source project created to host technologies that benefit the Z platform from all members of the Z community (Integrated Software Vendors, System Integrators and z/OS consumers). Zowe, like Mac OS or Windows, comes with a set of APIs and OS capabilities that applications build on and also includes some applications out of the box.
Zowe offers modern interfaces to interact with z/OS and allows you to work with z/OS in a way that is similar to what you experience on cloud platforms today. You can use these interfaces as delivered or through plug-ins and extensions that are created by clients or third-party vendors."
Step 1 in learning about Zowe is go to the web site WWW.ZOWE.ORG. You will see a lot of information there about Zowe, how to get Zowe, and what is being done with Zowe. And yes, you read it right, Zowe is an open source effort across multiple vendors, including IBM.
FYI. IBM has made a recent announcement about Zowe (IBM Z Distribution for Zowe V1.0).
Here's a link: Link for more info
Upcoming IBM Z security seminar
Webinar: Security in a Remote Work World Secure Authentication &Compliance
With the mainframe as the backbone of the borderless digital economy, enabling security of IBM Z has never been more crucial. With today’s number of remote workers, this need is exacerbated. To extend the inherent security, scale and performance of your mainframe, IBM offers a way to help you authenticate everyone accessing mainframe resources even from remote work locations.
Today’s work from home environment means your workforce has to spend more time accessing your
systems from remote locations. This poses new and more frequent chances for malicious intervention from internal or external threats. Please join us for a complimentary webinar covering how to enable the right people to have the right access to the right resources from anywhere.
For more information or questions contact Julian Basey: julian.basey@ibm.com
Agenda
• Welcome and Intro
• Common Mainframe
Cybersecurity Threats
• Z Multi-Factor
Authentication Overview
• Z Multi-Factor
Authentication Demo
• Closing Remarks / Q&A
Registration Link
Many informative IBM Z events are going virtual!
One of the things I plan to do is post information on interesting upcoming Z oriented virtual events. So if IBM Z is your area of interest, stay tuned to this space!
Considerations for Dashboard Edition (DE) in Omegamon Enhanced 3270 UI
For users that have been using Omegaview CUA screens, this is an important capability. All the more so because with V550 the CUA interface has been removed from the products.
There are some important considerations when setting up DE in Enhanced 3270 as a replacement to Omegaview. There are subtleties to controlling such things as the color of the alert in DE versus in the Tivoli Portal. I will go into this in more detail in a follow-up post.
More information on the New OMEGAMONs
If you want more information on the new suite here's a link:
IBM Service Management Suite announcement
Upcoming webcast on IBM CDPz and Splunk
If you want more detail on this technology, there is an upcoming webcast on the topic.
To register for the webcast, here's a link:
https://vts.inxpo.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:4;F:QS!10100&ShowKey=43016&AffiliateData=Flyer
IBM Common Data Provider supports Splunk
Splunk is a commonly available solution in the same space as IOAz. Splunk is a commonly used tool, but Splunk, by itself, does not offer any z/OS based information. Splunk requires some form of an additional collection mechanism to support z/OS.
The IBM Common Data Provider (CDP) is a SMF and message collection layer for z/OS. When you get IOAz you use CDP as the mechanism to collect z/OS data and send it to the IOAz server and GUI. This same process may also feed Splunk.
The following is an example of z/OS data in Splunk provided by IBM CDP.
OMEGAMON V5.5 announced!
What's in the new Service Management Suite? Here's the list:
- IBM Service Management Unite, V1.1.3
- IBM OMEGAMON Performance Management Suite for z/OS, V5.5.0
- IBM System Automation for z/OS, V4.1.0
- IBM Tivoli® NetView® for z/OS, V6.2.1
- IBM Tivoli Asset Discovery for z/OS, V8.1.0
- IBM OMEGAMON for z/OS, V5.5.0
- IBM OMEGAMON for CICS on z/OS, V5.5.0
- IBM OMEGAMON for IMS on z/OS, V5.5.0
- IBM OMEGAMON for Messaging on z/OS, V7.5.0
- IBM OMEGAMON for Networks on z/OS, V5.5.0
- IBM OMEGAMON for JVM on z/OS, V5.4.0
- IBM OMEGAMON for Storage on z/OS, V5.4.0
- IBM OMEGAMON Dashboard Edition on z/OS, V5.5.0
- IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for DB2 Performance Expert on z/OS, V5.4.0
- IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Application Diagnostics on z/OS, V7.1
Bottom line. If you are still using the CUA interface, now is the time to look at migrating onto the new UIs.
I will be posting much more on the new V5.5s as information becomes available.