Performance and CPU Usage

A lot of our engagements involve performance: making CICS transactions run faster, or batch jobs use less CPU. So we often go back to performance in our articles, and this issue does exactly that. But rather than review what you can find in a manual, we talk about our experiences, and issues you may not see documented anywhere.

In our first of two technical articles, we admit that we love RMF Monitor III, and show our top five features we use again and again. In our second technical articles we talk about the differences between tuning for performance, and tuning to reduce CPU usage.

Finally, in our opinion article David Stephens argues that every site should have a small set of dashboards showing near-real time data on z/OS performance: and this should be available to everyone.

We hope you enjoy this issue.

technical: My RMF Monitor III Top Five

OK, let's get this out of the way. I love RMF Monitor III. Really do. It's just brilliant. It can do amazing things. And best of all, most of my clients have it, and let me use it.

You could spend a lot of time looking at all the Share presentations and other documentation on RMF and what it can do. But let me tell you the five features I use most.

So, what advantages do IDEs give us, and do they really matter?

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technical: Performance Tuning vs CPU Reduction

I was trained as an engineer: so, I love elegance. I love systems that are simple, and I hate waste. I have more psychological issues, but these come in handy when making things run better: when tuning.

But what does 'better' really mean? As a consultant, my clients usually want to do one of two things: make things run faster, or reduce resource used (almost always CPU). Sometimes, my clients would like me to do both. But here's the thing: tuning to make things run faster is different to reducing CPU. Let me explain.

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opinion: Why Every Site Needs a Few Good Dashboards

As a consultant, I'm dropped into a mainframe site to achieve a goal, and then leave. Often this goal involves performance: making CICS transactions run faster, batch jobs end sooner, started tasks use less CPU. To do this, I'll look at SMF and other records to figure out what's happening: this guides me to find areas I can improve.

But here's the thing. I usually make my own performance reports. I go back to the SMF records, and create the charts and tables I want. I don't use reports, charts, or other data created by my client. I've never used a client's dashboards. And that's interesting.

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