The way we dealt with savings in IT in the past was often more tactical than strategic, with results we didn’t always anticipate. Can you honestly say we really did do proper risk analysis when we were asked to cut another 10 percent? The effects of years of cost-cutting exercises have taken some time, but they’re finally hitting us at exactly the worst possible moment.

z/VSE 5.1 has been available for order since late November 2011. The key building blocks for user exploitation of z/VSE 5.1—third-party vendor system and application software—are ready and available.

It’s been very hard to write this column. What do you say when one of your closest friends has a near-death experience, and the only thing you can do is sit by his or her side and hope for the best? It’s also been a very quiet period in the Linux on System z world. There isn’t much to talk about from the usual suspects, but I’ve done some digging to find several things that merit discussing in the column.

In my March/April column, I mentioned the high-profile research from Vanson Bourne, reporting CIOs’ concerns about the impending mainframe skills shortage. While I think these fears are often overstated, mainframe education and consultancy will likely become significant revenue streams for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) in the months and years ahead.

Storage Attached Network (SAN) is an efficient solution for many storage needs, especially where hundreds of gigabytes or even many terabytes are required. Linux running on z/VM can use SAN nicely, and System z provides Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) adapters to connect to the SAN fabric. But is it that easy? Connect it and it’s done? Not even close. From a z/VM perspective, if you have more than a handful of servers using SAN, things can get daunting quickly. This article describes some of the pain points associated with managing direct-attached SAN (not EDEVs, otherwise known as VM-emulated devices) from a z/VM perspective and how to overcome them.

In late 2011, IBM's premier virtualization product for System z debuted a new feature, z/VM Single System Image (SSI), which dramatically improves the horizontal scalability of z/VM workloads. Available in z/VM Release 6.2, SSI opens the door to easier, more flexible horizontal growth of large-scale virtual server environments by clustering up to four z/VM systems—each capable of running hundreds of virtual servers—in a rich, robust, shared-resource environment. Coordination of access to shared devices and network connections between members, as well as a common repository of virtual server definitions, allows workload to be spread seamlessly across the cluster. Capabilities such as multiple-system installation, a shared software service repository, and single-point-of-control administration and automation reduce systems management cost and effort. Capping all these features is Live Guest Relocation LGR), the ability to move running Linux virtual servers (guests) from one member to another without disruption, to redistribute workload and provide continuous operation through planned system outages.

Years ago, when a million CICS transactions a day was a lot, the data went on tape because it was so “huge.” Today, 500 million DB2 transactions may be considered small and, in many installations, the jobs that post-process System Management Facility (SMF) data have become among the largest applications. With the rising cost of software to support the ever-burgeoning volume of data, it’s important to decide what to keep and process daily. The tests run and examples provided here were all conducted with MXG, but the same techniques could be applied to other software performing the same functions.

The 64-bit virtual support introduced in z/VSE 5.1, available since November 2011, lifts a boundary and provides more options for growth and new applications. Before we consider how 64-bit virtual is implemented and what it provides, let’s examine the evolution of real and virtual addressing in VSE.

IPv6 news is everywhere these days. The availability of z/VSE 4.2.2 (and newer releases) provides the foundation of z/VSE's IPv6 support. Combine this with IBM's new TCP/IP solution, IPv6/VSE, which provides a single product solution for both IPv4 and IPv6 TCP/IP communications, and you have a powerful way to take z/VSE into the future. This article will examine the shortcomings of IPv4, the basics of IPv6, and what type of support is available for IPv6 in IBM's z/VSE operating system.

Over the past 11 years, the Linux operating system has gradually taken the business world by storm. Now, many corporations use Linux on mainframes to save money and improve quality of service. To maximize these important benefits, the IT staff is being tasked with ensuring that Linux management is set up in the most efficient, cost-effective way. This article addresses how IT can help accomplish this goal by automating and simplifying common z/VM and Linux on System z tasks.