Ron Ferguson (Mainstar)
Metadata -- It's Importance, and How It Affects System Performance
Metadata -- the system structures that provide access to your data -- are critical to your system. Strong emphasis is placed on performance and recovery of application data, but oftentimes, little thought is given to how critical the metadata structures are to your enterprise. Performance tuning of metadata for day-to-day use, as well as speed of recovery in the event of failure can be critical to your business operations. Senior management should be aware of how critical these structures are, so that performance and recovery of metadata is given the same emphasis as your enterprise data.

Stephen Samson (Candle Corporation)
Analysis of Workload Manager Recent Announcements and Advanced Topics
z/OS Workload Manager goes beyond what was available in OS/390 We'll examine critically the following topics:

• Intelligent Resource Direction
• WLM support of LPAR Defined Capacity
• ENQ enhancements
• Neat tips & tricks

Stephen Samson (Candle Corporation)
Conversion to Goal Mode Workshop
You've put off migrating to Workload Manager Goal Mode for years, but now it is time to bid farewell to your beloved IPS, ICS, and other arcane parmlib members you probably never fully understood or exploited anyways. Steve Samson will give you a roadmap for implementing Goal Mode, with tips and techniques garnered from the experience of previous implementations at shops of all sizes.

Peter Enrico (Enterprise Performance Strategies, Inc.)
Performance Tuning Considerations for WebSphere on z/OS
There are great many considerations and paths one could take for optimal WebSphere on z/OS performance. Performance tuning and capacity issues must be considered for the server topology, server configuration server startup and security. In addition, there are many system-tuning considerations for WebSphere, including the IBM HTTP Server, z/OS system tuning, workload manager, DB2, Language Environment, Java, System Logger, TCP/IP, and more. In fact, there is a whole cornucopia of areas to analyze and tune for optimal z/OS WebSphere Application Server performance.

During this particular seminar, Peter Enrico will focus on the most critical performance tuning recommendations for WebSphere Application Server, Enterprise Edition for z/OS. First, Peter will provide an overview of the z/OS WebSphere environment, why it exists, when it should be used, and how it relates to the IBM HTTP Server. During this portion of the class Peter will also discuss the Java 2 Enterprise Edition architecture, and how WebSphere 4.0.1 is used to satisfy the J2EE standard for an application server on the z/OS platform. Peter will then build on this information to provide WebSphere setup and tuning recommendations for optimal Web Application and Enterprise JavaBean performance. Included will be recommendations on server topology, web server configuration, Java considerations, HTTP server setup and tuning, and more.

An interest in WebSphere on z/OS is the only prerequisite for this seminar. Peter's goals for this seminar is to not just provide you with a set of recommendations, but to help you understand why the recommendation exists. With this information you will learn more about WebSphere running on z/OS and how it all works together.

AFTERNOON SESSIONS

Jeff Buzen (Independent Consultant)
The Pricing Revolution and its Implications for Performance Management (ILM)
New pricing models for both hardware and software are radically reshaping the landscape for capacity planners and performance analysts. On the hardware side, companies no longer have to pay in advance to stockpile equipment needed to meet future surges in customer activity. Instead, they can activate hardware components “on demand” and postpone paying for these resources until they are actually required. Changes in software pricing may have an even larger budgetary impact. The Variable Workload License Charge (VWLC) pricing model implemented under the IBM License Manager (ILM) is already saving some companies many thousands of dollars per month by ensuring that software costs are based on required (defined) capacity rather than total installed capacity. Setting ILM pricing parameters so they accurately reflect actual processing requirements will become an enormously important function over the next few years. The workshop covers the highlights of the pay as you go revolution and explains the details of VWLC pricing under ILM including entirely new concepts such as soft capping, defined capacity, license certificates, white space, and the reconciliation log.

Neil Gunther (Performance Dynamics Company (SM))
Application Scalability Analysis
Synopsis:

• Application scalability is key to success for many operations
• Shops use tools like LoadRunner (LR) to measure applications
• Tendency to focus on stress testing
• Scalability analysis requires a modified approach
• Manual Scenarios with steady-state windows
• How many load test points should you choose?
• How do you know you have a consistent set of test data?
• You need a model to sanity check the measured data
• What kind of model?
• Queueing models are too hard, and time consuming to set up (never gets done)
• Worse, they do not easily model effects like overloading
• I wil provide a simple regression model in EXCEL
• Requires relatively few measurement points (4-6)
• Contains all major effects
• I've used it successfully for a decade
• Reduce the cost of benchmarking prior to deployment
• Based on Chap. 6 of my book: http://books.iuniverse.com/viewbooks.asp?isbn=059512674X1&page=fm5
• I present several examples showing both good and bad LR data sets

This paper suggests techniques than can be used to safely navigate this data.

Mark Ames (ICT Risk)
Managing Data Security in the Internetwork Environment
Organisations putting their corporate data on-line want to make it available for business and still keep it secure. Managing the technology is challenging, but managing the business and operational risks is daunting. This talk discusses how business, security, and operational functions can be brought together to manage the risks effectively.

Thomas Beretvas (Beretvas Performance Consultants)
Storage Processor (DASD) tuning process (a tutorial)
In this session, the speaker will provide a methodology for identifying and curing storage processor (DASD) performance problems. First the highlights are summarized, then the procedures are described. The symptoms of tuning problems are identified, the method of finding them are explained and potential remedies are suggested. A case study is shown explaining the process. The case study illustrates the reduction methods that lead to rapid identification of problem areas to analyze the data. In addition, further tuning steps to be used are also discussed.

Thomas Beretvas (Beretvas Performance Consultants)
Performance of Linux systems with emphasis on I/O
In this session, the speakers will provide a methodology for identifying Linux performance problems. First the highlights are summarized. The emphasis would be on I/O problems. A case study is shown explaining the process.

Bradley Bruhahn (Sandpiper Data Systems, Inc.)
Taming the 'Rolling Disaster'
Paper Abstract: True 'Global' IT continuous availability is now feasible with Geographically Dispersed Parallel SYSPLEX (GDPS) and related strategies. GDPS provides the control needed to maintain total data integrity within a 'mirrored' DASD and Tape environment and completely addresses the issues of a 'rolling disaster'. It allows z/OS and open systems to be completely available in less than one hour of a total data center loss, with a goal of no perceived downtime to the user. In this session the speaker will discuss the functionality of GDPS and detail the planning issues involved with mirroring two physical data centers. He will also cover several configuration options and performance aspects of GDPS that you should consider before embarking on this or similar projects in your environment.

Larry Chu (California State University)
A Four Sigma Quality Service Level Agreement
In an information system environment, Statistical Process Control (SPC) has become a performance tool for continuous measurement improvement. SPC helps to monitor workload activities, ensure user satisfaction, improve user productivity, and lower computing cost.
Service Level Agreements (SLA) are a contributing key to the success of an effective and efficient information system department (ISD), and the Statistical Process Control concept has been adopted to be part of the SLA requirement. SLA reporting has become an important communication means between the ISD management and the users.
This paper describes our SPC methodology in targeting for 100% of Service Level Agreements, and shows the value of the SPC process in our information service environment, using a four sigma for the quality target. It details the one-job submission procedure to automate the SLA reporting to our intranet website, IBM Lotus Notes email system, the UNIX system, and our personal computer platforms.

Peter Enrico (Enterprise Performance Strategies, Inc.)
Tuning UNIX System Services – A Cookbook Approach
UNIX System Services is now an integrated part of every OS/ 390 and z/OS system. In the past, for most shops it was usually something that was there but was not dealt with on a regular basis. Well, not anymore. UNIX Systems Services is a part the operating system that can (and usually does) affect every one of your workloads. Most new workloads (such as web serving and web application server) on OS/ 390 and z/OS run in the UNIX environment or is some way connected to the UNIX environment. Many of the traditional workloads are also been affected by UNIX System Services since the UNIX workloads (both large and small) are now in the mix contending for system resources with your traditional workloads. Regardless of the workload mix, UNIX System Services must be tuned for the benefit of all workloads.
This presentation is for those interested in the performance of their z/OS and OS/390 systems (that should be all of you).
Tuning UNIX System Services is a large subject, and it will not be possible to cover all topics during a single session. Instead the speaker will draw from his experiences with UNIX System Services to present a variety of relevant and important tuning recommendations. Items discussed will include how to gain an understanding of what is running in the UNIX System Service environment, and how to begin to monitor this work. The presenter will also discuss the new zFS file system, how it compares to HFS architecturally and in regards to performance.
A prerequisite for this session is an interest in UNIX System Service on z/OS. A goal of the presenter is for the attendee not just to learn a new recommendation, but why the recommendation exists. In turn, the attending will have a better understanding of UNIX System Services and how it could affect the performance of the system and the workloads running on the system.

Peter Enrico (Enterprise Performance Strategies, Inc.)
WLM: How to Start Figuring Out Why Strange Things Happen
OK - you've successfully migrated to goal mode and have even been there for a while. Your workloads are running well, goals are being met, and it appears your resources are being used efficiently. Life is good.
Then one day, things just seem to run a bit differently. Maybe a goal is being missed. Or perhaps you notice that a particular set of address space are running a lower CPU dispatching priority or maybe even getting swapped out. Maybe a user calls up complaining that response times seem slower.
Your natural reaction is to look at the standard workload activity data, but this analysis only shows you so much and does not give you the answer you are looking for. What you really want to know at this point is 'What is WLM doing?' or 'What is WLM's view of my workloads and resources?' or 'Why did WLM make that decision?'. This presentation will make the leap from the standard workload activity measurements to analysis of the SMF 99 records.

Oscar Ernst
What's New in Storage: 2002 Review, 2003 Preview
The storage industry this year has been extremely rich in takeovers, marketing activity, announcements, promises and failures to deliver. The battle between vendors has been fierce and the big losers, as usual, are the users who are getting more and more confused every day. As the end of the year approaches, it is time to take a closer look at what has happened to find out whether there are any useful new things under the sun and what we can reasonably expect from the vendors in the coming year.

Fil Faini (CPT Global)
Midrange Capacity Planning: Establishing the Foundation
Increased visibility of an organisation's mission critical systems through the growth of Internet and web-based applications has seen the focus of capacity planning broaden. No longer can organisations continue to simply focus on the mainframe with the view of purchasing midrange capacity when the need arises. Procurement and installation lead times could see an organisation's mission critical application suffer poor performance for the lack of a capacity plan.
This paper will provide a framework for capacity planning in the midrange environment that can be modified and expanded to fit the diversity of any application. The paper will cover system and application data sources, strategies in collecting and storing data from multiple servers, methodology for combine system and business drivers into a meaningful capacity plan, building a simple capacity model, outlining some useful ROTs and threshold.

Ron Ferguson (Mainstar)
The performance aspects of point-in-time copies for mirrored volumes
This paper will be on point-in-time copies for mirrored volumes, with respect to the performance aspects of how the copies are taken, and what the timing and performance implications are for getting applications and onlines back up and running.

Ron Ferguson (Mainstar)
ICF Catalog Performance Tuning
This session will explore several performance tuning aspects concerning your ICF catalogs for MVS. Topics will include catalog definition attributes that affect performance, Catalog Address Space buffering considerations, catalog ingetrity support with VVDS and Enhanced Catalog Sharing. The session will also show internal

John Griffiths (ProActive Services)
ITIL and Your Service Desk - Are they Married, Divorced, or Yet to Meet?
Service Desks are one place in IT that are very visible to customers. What happens there is a reflection, true or perceived, of how the customers view IT. Anything that can help reinforce a positive image of the Service Desk can only benefit all concerned. The process of introducing ITIL to your Service Desk could help, but how do you do it? This session will look at some practical issues such as where to start, what to consider and how to avoid some of the things that have caused others problems.

Neil Gunther (Performance Dynamics Company (SM))
Celebrity Boxing and Sizing: Alan Greenspan vs. Gene Amdahl!
Amdahl's law and the Multiprocessing Factor (MPF) are two scaling models used throughout industry for sizing multiprocessor capacity in the presence of the multiprocessor effect. Both sizing models express different laws of diminishing returns. Amdahl's law identifies diminishing capacity with a constant amount of serialization in the workload, while the MPF model treats it as a constant ratio (compound interest). Each model, however, predicts very different results for large processor configurations that are so important for today's applications. Which one should you use? We turn to queueing theory for more insight and show that Amdahl's law corresponds to a synchronous bus model, while MPF represents a uniform Coxian server. The latter exhibits unphysical effects, such as SUBLINEAR response times(!?) hence, we caution against its use for large multiprocessor configurations.

Mark Heers (EMC Corporation)
One Year Later - A Review of Business Continuance
We are on the anniversary of the tragedy of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This singular event renewed the focus on business continuity with the senior management and boards of directors of companies around the world reviewing their company's strategies. Before then, Disaster Recovery (which more recently has been termed business continuance) for many companies was the existence of a document which described the steps to recreate their IT environment (or a key part of it) in a different location. For many, there was little will to regularly test the recovery plan nor to keep it up to date. For others, it was little more than a tick from the auditing section.
One undoubted fact which emerged was that only two resources were truly irreplaceable - people and information.
This presentation will focus on some of the latest thinking with business continuity. Mark discusses several issues unearthed during the September 11 disaster. He also discusses issues such as keeping databases on diverse platforms in a consistent state and contrasts the difference between disaster recovery and disaster restart.

Chris Jones (private/independant consultant)
IT Metrics: Issues, Options and Implementation
The issues of IT metrics is a complex and integral part of any service management implementation. Within ITIL based implementations, metrics continuously emerge in every area, apart from Service Level Management. Metrics are the basis to reporting, but many times what we attempt to report, and what the customer/ management are expecting are two very different things.

Ilkyu Lee (Aurema Pty Limited)
A performance model for a fair share scheduler
A fair share scheduler allocates a share of a CPU to a task. A performance model tells whether the underlying CPU has enough capacity to handle given tasks within their required CPU response times. In this paper, a mathematical model for a fair share scheduler is proposed. First, an equation for estimating the worst-case CPU response time is derived. Then, a condition to tell if the underlying CPU has enough capacity to guarantee that all the required CPU response times are met is defined.

Thomas Li (IBM GSA)
Designing CICS Applications for Performance
During CICS application design, system designers usually put the focus on the business functions. This presentation will discuss the importance of adding "performance" into the application design, and focus on those critical resources needed for CICS transaction processing. By understanding the resource bottlenecks and system bottlenecks which are affecting the performance, system designers can build applications which can avoid those bottlenecks and improve the application performance.

Craig Linn (University of Western Sydney)
Web Caching: A Survey from Passive to Active Pull Paper
With a few specific exceptions response time performance on the World Wide Web is largely driven by proximity of the desired data. It is thus not surprising that an entire hierarchy of caches from the origin server to the final client browser has grown up - with this cache hierarchy not only reducing response time but also significantly cutting down on network traffic, improving availability, and distributing load. This paper first introduces the motivations and rationale for caching, and then provides a review of the structure of the traditional web cache hierarchy and how it maintains content freshness. Next it examines some of the features of the specialised web caching devices now available. It then goes on to consider the advent of edge-side network caching driven by Content Delivery Service Providers. In essence we look at the transition of web caching from a passive pull model for content distribution to what is fast becoming a very controlled and active pull model with a good deal of push thrown in. The paper is written on the premise that to manage caching (and related performance) one must first understand it. Therefore in addition to the presented material many references are included for sources that provide either more in depth material or practical guidelines as to how to enhance web system caching performance.

Neil McMenemy (McMenemy Consultants)
Performing under Stress: Performance and Stress Testing of a New Mainframe Application - A Case Study
A major UK bank was about to introduce a new core banking application but needed to prove that it was scalable and performant. Rather than rely on modelling, the bank decided to invest in a ‘stand alone’ stress testing environment. This paper describes the issues in collecting performance data, analysing it, making tuning recommendations based on that analysis and the regression testing of those changes.

Both on-line and batch will be covered as will the techniques and tools used to collect and manipulate the performance data. The exercise concludes with a discussion on how significant the new application is going to be on the existing production infrastructure.

Barton Robinson (Velocity Software)
Managing server (Unix, Linux, NT) Consolidation to S/390
Mainframes are dead? This presentation will illustrate the process of identifying those servers and applications that can and should be consolidated to s/390 (mainframe). Why? Server consolidation saves money in people costs as shown by many TCO studies. Server consolidation gives you the opportunity to provide better resource utilization and performance given certain conditions are met. The paper discusses the method of selecting the servers and applications to be so chosen.

Barton Robinson (Velocity Software)
Analyzing performance of Unix, Linux and NT machines in a network
It is a big problem when managing a large network of rack servers to readily identify those servers that encounter performance problems. The paper presents a methodology and discusses the means of identifying the servers that have excessive CPU, storage or disk storage utilization. Deficiencies in the technology of performance instrumentation of these servers will be noted. A case study will be presented.

Brian Scott (Bunya Technology Pty Ltd)
Is That All There Is? (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love XML)
XML has long been talked of as the next Good Thing. Others have taken the view that it could just be the most boring technology since ASCII. It isn’t particularly complex or sexy - it just works. But there are some pretty exciting ideas about how XML could make the world a nicer place. The author has been exploiting this underwhelming technology for 2 years. This paper aims to demystify XML and encourage you to enjoy its quiet charms too.

Tony Shediak (Ampdev P/L)
Performance Tuning Mainframe Applications
This paper covers practical performance tuning tips and experiences primarily aimed at the MVS environment using Cobol and PL/I with some consideration to IMS, VSAM and DB2. The emphasis is not only on tuning existing applications but also on developing performance considerate applications

Richard Smith (Sun Microsystems Australia)
Performance Analysis Case Studies
Solving performance problems is a bit like detective work. The initial evidence needs to be collected and analysed, but in itself may not be sufficient to solve the problem. Hypotheses may be formed and additional tests run to narrow down the possibilities. Part of the skill lies in being aware of the multiple sources of information available, and knowing how to interpret the data. In a typical operating environment there are many many tools available for obtaining information, some well known, others quite obscure.

This paper is based on the author's varied experiences in tackling performance problems, based principly on SPARC/Solaris platforms. The experiences hopefully illustrate the practical application of a selection of tools and sources of data, as well as give some insight into the thought processes used to tackle these problems.

Mike Tsykin (Fujitsu Australia Limited)
An approach to automated monitoring of End-To-End Service Level Agreements
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) based on end-to-end metrics such as response time (ETE RT) are becoming common. For large networks, monitoring of these becomes very resource-consuming and trouble-shooting (identification of a probable cause of a problem) problematic. Automation of this process is necessary.
This paper describes an approach to such automation. It describes the thery behind it, a sample implementation and the tools used. It also surveys the other tools available on the market.

CPT Global
How CPT Global can assist you to slash your IT infrastructure costs.
In these tough economic times, focus on cost management and control has never been greater. IT Professionals are consistently asked to deliver more and more with less and less - to improve efficiency, response time, development time - all while having to manage within the constraints of static or shrinking budgets. The demands seem endless. What can IT Professionals do to meet this constant challenge and improve the bottom line?

Mainstar International
System Programmer ToolKit -- A New Feature Set in Mainstar's Catalog RecoveryPlus
This session will introduce several new features in Mainstar's Catalog RecoveryPlus product -- specifically designed to assist the MVS system programmer who is responsible for gen'ing and replicating new MVS systems. Every system programmer faces, on a regular basis, one or more of the problems addressed with this new feature set, including invalid and/or multiple VVDSs on a volume, new system data sets whose names match current system data sets and the outstanding ENQs get in the way of doing what you need to do, and setting up new volser symbolics in cloned ICF catalogs. A major new command in Catalog RecoveryPlus, GENERATE BCS-UNLOAD is a total replacement for the now-defunct MCNVTCAT facility that IBM previously distributed with the CBIPO and ServerPac facility, with powerful commands and filters that let you specify exactly the parts of an ICF catalog that you wish to generate IDCAMS statements for catalog duplication. This exciting new facility in Catalog RecoveryPlus extends the functionality of this product far beyond just ICF catalog backup and recovery, and makes it a must-have for every MVS installation.

Rufunsa Technology
The IT Jobs Recession: Hope for the Future?
Just 2 years after an IT industry boom, the Australian IT job market is at its lowest ebb since the advent of computing in commerce 40 years ago. Is there worse to come, or are we bumping along the bottom prior to a phoenix like recovery? Whatever the future holds, the huge pool of highly skilled unemployed IT professionals presents a point of opportunity for an employer, and a major challenge for those looking for a new career.

This session will discuss the recent history of the IT job market, the current state of play - where (and why) have all the jobs gone? And what the future holds. It will go on to share useful information for those in the market (both employers and those looking for their next career move) on how best to manage and exploit the situation. In the process the presentation will lift the lid on the IT recruitment industry, and demonstrate why many IT recruiters deserve their notoriety.

Since 1993, PhilOrd has been MD of Rufunsa Technology Services, a recruitment and contracting services company specialising in enterprise systems infrastructure functions. Prior to this he held IT management positions in the banking, insurance, and mining sectors in Australia and overseas.