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Mastering Complexity: Monitoring z/OS IP Networks Easily, Graphically, Thoroughly

by Software Diversified Services, April 2006

INSIDE THE VIP WHITE PAPER:

How to Monitor TCP/IP on z/OS

• Learn how to increase network throughput and application availability.
• Confidently assure users that you guarantee quick response times.
• Your web browser can show you what applications are up and down, on z/OS and all through the network, in real time.
• Get immediate alerts to threats, outages, and slow-downs on mainframe networks.
  • Fix them before users notice there's a problem.
• Teach your z/OS machine to daily post graphic performance reports to e-mail addresses and intranet web servers.
• From a single web site, monitor:
  • TN3270 response times and security threats
  • HTTP connection rates
  • IP fragmentation errors
  • Application availabilty throughout the network
  • FTP user IDs, file names, data-transfer rates
  • Complete details about OSA and Enterprise Extender

Mainframe networks have become very, very complicated since the old days of SNA. To be useful and usable, a network monitor needs to centralize data from all kinds of applications, interfaces, and protocols. And to get the data quietly and efficiently, it needs to choose wisely from a large kit of tools.

When a performance monitor adds to CPU demands, it's creating problems, not solving them. Your monitor should seldom use more than about 1% of available CPU. And you can easily out-perform the monitors that come packaged in the usual mainframe software suites.

Service-level agreements (SLAs) are easier to manage when you can provide fool-proof, illustrated measurement of service levels.

Planning to meet future demands without waste and without down-time requires historical analysis to reveal patterns and trends.

Read a brief excerpt from the VIP White Paper:

TCP/IP has now firmly displaced SNA as the preferred and strategic means for mainframe networking. That is beyond refute. SNA mission-critical applications, these days, are successfully sustained across TCP/IP networks through a combination of Enterprise Extender (EE), TN3270(E) WEB-TO-HOST, and possibly the IBM Communications Controller for Linux (CCL). Thus to realize "zero-downtime" mainframe operations, with crisp and consistent response times for interactive users, one has no choice but to master TCP/IP management and response-time monitoring (RTM).

Mainframe TCP/IP networking can involve multiple stacks per LPAR, virtual addresses, gigabit OSA interfaces, hipersockets, dynamic VIPA takeovers across a sysplex, disparate application protocols, many hosts, and lots of connectionless interactions. There is also a need to be cognizant of routers, fragmentation-inducing IPSEC gateways, switches, firewalls, and possibly even Linux LPARs--with performance, in particular TN3270 and HTTP(S) response times, always a concern, and security a nagging worry.

To stay on top of all of this, to deliver zero-downtime operations, you need a good mainframe network monitor that is probing, incisive, thorough, and nimble--that, moreover, works in true real-time. Otherwise, you will be "flying blind.” Having a comprehensive RTM capability, coupled with IP fragmentation management, is an added bonus--like having radar.

continued...(click here, *.pdf, 1,700 kb)

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