RMF Monitoring SMS Storage Groups and Disk Space in z/OS R7

[Knutson, Sam]

Hi,

I am looking at the new RMF III reports introduced in z/OS R7 to provide
information on SMS managed disk space:

SPACEG Storage space
SPACED Disk space

I cannot understand why in the world at least SPACEG is not being logged
to an SMF record were it would be useful! The data is good for our
storage team who like SMS pool utilization at this granularity. Looking
at it highlights again some frustrating limitations of RMF III.

SORT and FILTER options are not present on these and many other reports
when they should be available on all ISPF reports.

I am spoiled by MXI and TMON roster (GRF) screens which provide good
filtering and sorting options:-)

Any RMF III data should be optionally recorded in SMF instead of only
the VSAM data sets. MXG provides an assembler program ASMRMFV to
extract the contents of the VSAM files into a sequential file to process
with SAS/MXG. I don't think support has been added for the new internal
records that support SPACEG/SPACED yet but even when this is done it is
a kludge.

Disk space is yet another metric that makes sense to collect only once
in a Sysplex/SMSplex but no automated way to do that is provided and the
user has to know which system is recording the data to look at it. For
all vendors please automate the process of collecting data (if the
customer specifies) once within a sysplex providing for a preference
list of systems on which they prefer collection to take place. Please
automate reporting and query so that users don't care which systems were
active and which was recording the data so long as they can invoke the
query interface on any system in the Sysplex. Sysplex master gather was
at least the right concept.

If nothing else couldn't RMF provide the ONLYIF PARMLIB statement
support by DFSMShsm so that it would be easy to do this. The previous
recommended techniques of using an MVS Static symbol is pretty ugly when
you want to specify a couple dozen storage groups on one system and
NOSGSPACE on all the others. You can do it string them all together but
it's ugly and there is no supported interface to update a system symbol
dynamically while the storage team will certainly eventually add or
delete a storage group.

SGSPACE(ADD(DB2LOGS )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(DB2PROD )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(DB2QUERY)) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(EPOLICY )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(EPOLICY2)) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(G1 )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(G2 )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(G3 )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(IMAGECPY)) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(IMSLOGS )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(IMSPROD )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(OBJDATA )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(QA )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(QAB )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(SGDBA )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(SGDRP )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(SGIMS9 )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(SGOMVS )) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(SGOMVSYS)) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */
SGSPACE(ADD(SGSYSTEM)) /* COLLECT SPACE INFORMATION */

While I am at it why or why didn't anyone with access to the IBM
internal documentation consider that since it's trivial for them to get
a list of all active storage groups maybe they should allow *ALL to be
specified by the customer and just go and locate all POOL type storage
groups.

My relationship with RMF data is always love/hate. The data is
generally very good if present and RMF is very reliable but the user
interface for the RMF ISPF interface continues to leave something to be
desired.

Just thinking out loud here but maybe someone else can shed some light
on the reasons behind these limitations or can say they really aren't as
limiting as it seems to me.

Best Regards,

Sam Knutson, GEICO
Performance and Availability Management
mailto:***@geico.com
(office) 301.986.3574

To define recursion, we must first define recursion.


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[Bruce Black]

Sam, since Geico is licensed for FDREPORT, you may want to look at the
reporting faciliites in that program. It can provide dataset and volume
level reports, with complete customizaiton, selection, sorting and
summarization. There are examples in the manual (sect 54). We also
provide a set of predefined reports called the "Innovation Health Check"
which uses FDREPORT do check for unusual conditions and also to provide
summary reports (also doc in sect 54). FDREPORT can save its results in
a file so that you can report on the data multiple ways without having
to recollect the data.

I don't know specifically what those RMF III reports do, but I am sure
that FDREPORT can do it faster and more flexibly. It is run as a batch
job so you can collect the data on whatever system you prefer.
--
Bruce A. Black
Senior Software Developer for FDR
Innovation Data Processing 973-890-7300
personal: ***@fdrinnovation.com
sales info: ***@fdrinnovation.com
tech support: ***@fdrinnovation.com
web: www.innovationdp.fdr.com

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[Knutson, Sam]

Hi Bruce,

I am sure as a adhoc tool FDREPORT is more flexible. The advantage of
the disk space reports in RMF III is that they collect minimal data all
the time on an interval basis and the data is available in a tool which
is already available to all the system staff which they are familiar
with. Vendors don't bother calling we know your fine products are
available:-)

DTS has a very nice product SCC which can feed similar data to a MySQL
database and provides slick GUI for realtime analysis.

TMONMVS v4.0 is supposed to have some nice SMS related display
enhancements.

There is an OMEGAMON for Storage conveniently located next to OMEGAMON
for z/OS, CICS, DB2, IMS, etc.

Etc. etc. etc.

RMF is something a great many of us have and it's good to see IBM doing
enhancements in addition to just keeping the same metrics working
accurately in new releases. I think the market penetration for RMF is
probably higher than for any one specialized storage solution so all RMF
users have a shared interest in enhancements. RMF is not free and I
think many folks would like to get more out of it instead of buying
OMEGAMON for Storage.... Or

Best Regards,

Sam Knutson, GEICO
Performance and Availability Management
mailto:***@geico.com
(office) 301.986.3574

It's supposed to do that. Anonymous help-line response, 1982


-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-***@ibm-main.lst
Behalf Of Bruce Black
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 12:34 PM
To: IBM-***@BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: RMF Monitoring SMS Storage Groups and Disk Space in z/OS R7

Sam, since Geico is licensed for FDREPORT, you may want to look at the
reporting faciliites in that program. It can provide dataset and volume
level reports, with complete customizaiton, selection, sorting and
summarization. There are examples in the manual (sect 54). We also
provide a set of predefined reports called the "Innovation Health Check"

which uses FDREPORT do check for unusual conditions and also to provide
summary reports (also doc in sect 54). FDREPORT can save its results in
a file so that you can report on the data multiple ways without having
to recollect the data.

I don't know specifically what those RMF III reports do, but I am sure
that FDREPORT can do it faster and more flexibly. It is run as a batch
job so you can collect the data on whatever system you prefer.

--
Bruce A. Black
Senior Software Developer for FDR
Innovation Data Processing 973-890-7300
personal: ***@fdrinnovation.com
sales info: ***@fdrinnovation.com
tech support: ***@fdrinnovation.com
web: www.innovationdp.fdr.com
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[shmuel+ (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.)]

In
<***@GP2K0084V1.GEICO.corp.net>,
on 05/30/2006

Post by Knutson, Sam
I am sure as a adhoc tool FDREPORT is more flexible.

I've found it quite useful.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
ISO position; see <http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html>
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)

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