This episode is about several of the z/OS V2.5 new functions, which were recently announced, for both the Mainframe and Performance topics. Our Topics topic is on Martin's Open Source tool filterCSV.  Full long show notes are here.

We have a guest for Performance: Nick Matsakis, z/OS Development, IBM Poughkeepsie.

Many of the enhancements you'll see in the z/OS V2.5 Preview were provided on earlier z/OS releases via Continuous Delivery PTFs. The APARs are provided in the announce.

If you use FTPS for your IBM software electonic delivery, a change is taking place on April 30, 2021. We strongly recommend you use HTTPS instead, but if you still want to use FTPS see IBM software electronic delivery change - take notice!

Mainframe - Selected z/OS V2.5 enhancements

• IBM will have z/OS installable with z/OSMF, in a portable software instance format! z/OS V2.4 will not be installable with z/OSMF, and z/OS V2.4 driving system requirements remain the same. z/OS V2.5 will be installable via z/OSMF, so that is a big driving system change.


• Learn z/OSMF Software Management at this website.


• Notification of availability of TCP/IP extended services


• Workload Manager (WLM) batch initiator management takes into account availability of zIIP capacity


• Change the Master Catalog without IPL


• IDCAMS DELETE mask takes TEST and EXCLUDE.


• IDCAMS REPRO moves I/O buffers above line.


• New RMF Concept for CF data gathering


• RMF has been restructured, but all the functions are still intact. z/OS V2.5 RMF is still a priced feature.

Performance - zCX enhancements

• zCX is important for co-locating Linux on Z containers with z/OS.


• Popular use cases can be found here and in the Redbook here. Another helpful source is Ready for the Cloud with IBM zCX.


• zIIP eligibility enhancements


• New enhancements include support 1 MB and 2 GB large pages (still fixed) for backing guests.


• Guest memory is planned to be configured up to 1 TB


• Another relief is in Disk space limits


• Monitor and log zCX resource usage of the root disk, guest memory, swap disk, and data disks in the servers job log.


• zCX resource shortage z/OS alerts to improve monitoring and automated operations.


• SIMD (or Vector). SIMD is a performance feature, and can be used for analytics.


• Nick's presentation (with Mike Fitzpatrick) is here.

Topics - filterCSV and tree manipulation

• Mindmapping leads to trees. Thinking of z/OS: Sysplex -> System -> Db2 -> Connected CICS leads to trees.


• Has very little automation of its own. But crucially you can mangle the CSV file outside of iThoughts, which is what filterCSV does.
  
  
  
  • filterCSV is a python open source program that manipulates iThoughts CSV files, colouring CICS regions according to naming conventions
  
  
  
  

So it goes.