performance of mainframes

[Michael Samuels]

I'm interested in finding out as much detail about insight into mainframe performance vs. other servers.  The mainframe folks have their own vocabulary and talk about issues as if there is something totally different going on.   

So my real questions are:

(1) Are mainframes "coming back," or have they "never left"?  Or, have I been transported back to the 1970s in my current task? ;)

(2) Can performance be simulated the same way as virtualization in servers?  Performance modeling tools, such as OPNET IT System Planner, have a separate "Detailed Server" license from their "Mainframe" license, but I don't know about the internals.  Hyperformix (now CA Technology's Performance Optimizer) has a different icon and library for these two groups, but again, I'm not clear about actual differences in how these are modeled.The monitoring tools are also much different, but the literature on what they do seems to be from the 1980s.

(3) Is there a good guidebook on collecting performance data?   Several customers own tools such as Tivoli ITCAM, but I only see it being used on rare occasions due to the overhead. As for documentation, there are the IBM Redbooks, but these are huge, and it's difficult to focus in on performance issues.

[Alexander Podelko]

1) "never left"

2) basics are still the same

3) Mainframes have very good instrumentation build in, so you have tons of performance data you never even dream on other platforms. But yes, the tools / sources are different. Get in touch with mainframe performance people and work together with them. No practical chance you may do it alone (according to my experience - I was in your situation).

Looks through CMG proceedings  http://cmg.org/proceedings/ - you will find tons of good papers about mainframe performance and simulation. For example, check

CMG-T: z/OS Tuning Basics
by Glenn Anderson

Also there was a document on the IBM Site, "Introduction to the New Mainframe: z/OS Basics" which helped me a lot with mainframe terminology when I was in your shoes.

Good luck,

Alex

---

From: Michael Samuels <miju...@gmail.com>
To: software-perform...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, November 4, 2011 8:58 AM
Subject: {SPE: 28} performance of mainframes

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