The mainframe system produces robust amounts of data in the form of SMF data.    It takes a lot of time and effort to record, summarize and analyze this data, and for many shops, this may stretch their abilities.    Historically most mainframe monitors and reporting tools focus on gross CPU analysis and detail-level analysis.    Tools provide deep dive abilities using database technologies while other tools offload the mainframe data for analysis off-platform.   With this amount of data, it’s often difficult to find an easy and effective way to look at and gauge system performance.   

 

RMF delay analysis provides the ability to look at system performance data at a higher level and provides the ability to more easily assess system performance and resource usage.    Our session will demonstrate the use of this data which is typically overlooked or under-utilized.   This data is also a key element in an effective capacity planning process.    We will demonstrate the use of this data using a free tool called VPAT but this data can be accessed by most any toolset.    Our session will then demonstrate a capacity planning and visualization methodology also using the VPAT tool using a case-study demonstration.

 

Our capacity planning exercise will show how to use ZPCR metrics and how to plan for and analyze the impact of growth in order to develop an effective forward looking capacity plan that can be easily accessed and modified as needed.    This will be done with the VPAT tool but the underlying methodology can be applied using many other tools that are available.