1.  MTTR ITSO Residency – Help Please
2.  Are You Running SMF Logger?

1.  MTTR ITSO Residency – Help Please

We sent this request out two weeks ago, and have been pleased with the replies we’ve received, but we could really use more responses.  Can you take ten minutes and help out a little?  Answering even a few of the questions below will give us help.  And if anyone can send some start up or shut down logs for z/OS and the joblogs from any subsystem (especially CICS, IMS, and DB2), it would be wonderful.  Thanks so much!  Cheryl

While at SHARE, I heard about an interesting upcoming ITSO residency on reducing the Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR).  IBM’s ITSO (International Technical Support Organization) is the organization that publishes Redbooks, and the objective of this four-week residency in May is to produce a Redbook showing ways to reduce the MTTR (the time to shut down a z/OS system and complete a re-IPL).  I’m very excited about being selected for this residency.  Would you like to help out our team by providing some information about your site?  All information will be kept confidential.  The easiest way is to forward this email to me at technical@watsonwalker.com and include your answers to the questions below.  You can also find a form at www.watsonwalker.com/mttr.pdf.  If you want to send it anonymously, you can fax or mail the form.  My direct fax rather than the company fax is best because it comes to my email (941-827-9493).  Please try to provide feedback before May 4 when the residency begins.

Frank Kyne of IBM is the project leader of this residency and thinks that your answers to the questions below would help us.  (I told him that our readers were always very willing to help when needed!)

1.  How long is a typical IPL for a planned outage?

2.  How do you define the start of an IPL and the completion of an IPL?

3.  How long is a typical shutdown for a planned outage?

4.  How do you define the start of the shutdown and the end (the point at which you are able to IPL)?

5.  Do you have any subsystems that take a long time to initialize?  How long? Can you explain why?

6.  How do you define the start of subsystem initialization and its completion?  Specific messages?

7.  Do you have startup or shutdown problems you frequently observe?

8.  What is the worst recovery time problem you face on an ongoing basis?

9.  Which typically takes longer: the recovery processing itself, or determining what recovery process to initiate?

10.  Briefly describe your environment (e.g. large system environment, 4-way SYSPLEX with DB2 Data Sharing and JES2 MAS, Automation Product XYZ, CICS and WebSphere, OLTP workload, etc.).

In addition, we’d love to have any logs that you’re willing to share, such as syslog at start up or shut down, or joblogs from subsystems, such as CICS, IMS, etc.

I really appreciate any information you’re willing to share with us.  It will help everyone in the long run.

2.  Are You Running SMF Logger?

A subscriber has asked to be put in touch with anyone who has run SMF Logger in production.  Actually, I’d like to be in touch with the same people!  If you’re willing to share via email, please let me know at technical@watsonwalker.com.  Thanks!

Stay Tuned!