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SmartProduction
FAQs
1. What type of tool is
SmartProduction?
SmartProduction
is a batch analysis and tuning tool that allows you to easily and
dramatically reduce the resource consumption and elapsed time of
production jobs and applications.
SmartProduction is for z/OS and OS/390 environments. It also requires
ISPF Version 2 or above, and TSO/E Version 1 Release 3 or above.
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2. What makes
SmartProduction unique?
SmartProduction,
unlike most tuning packages and optimizers, examines and analyzes
the job flow and application resource consumption, rather than system
capacity and system performance. This analysis is performed after
the production flow has completed, thus preventing analysis overhead
during job run-time.
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3.
How does SmartProduction improve the performance of the production
batch workload?
SmartProduction
improves the performance of the production batch workload by applying
the following key optimization strategies:
- Elimination
of unnecessary processing. Are
there jobs, steps or functions that are no longer required? For
example, a job continues to run each day even though the requirement
for this job ended some time ago.
SmartProduction helps
you recover 100% of the system resource utilization and elapsed
time they consume.
- Optimize
I/O. When
elapsed batch run time is broken into components, the bulk of
the time is usually consumed performing I/O (60-70% on average,
and 90% or more if the job is I/O bound). I/O optimization often
generates the most significant payback in any tuning project.
Many techniques and options, either hardware or software, are
available in order to reduce the number of I/Os and to perform
the remaining I/Os as efficiently as possible.
- Increase
Operational Effectiveness. When batch tasks (jobs, steps or specific functions) requiring
certain physical or logical resources are delayed or slowed, optimizing
the use of resources and eliminating resource contention can significantly
reduce elapsed time.
- Increase
Parallelism. The
batch workload can run much faster if tasks (jobs, steps or specific
functions) can be overlapped (executed in parallel rather than
sequentially). Improvements made by SmartProduction include:
- Switching
to more efficient utilities (present at the site) to copy and
extract data via "smart" I/O operations
- Making
optimal use of DB2 query, CPU, and data-sharing parallelism
- Optimizing
the use of resources and eliminating the resource contention
of specific jobs. This can significantly reduce the elapsed
time of other jobs, which, as a result, can be submitted and
run at an earlier stage
- Increase Online Availability. Online availability not only requires online
systems to be up and active, but also that all data sets and data
bases used by these systems are as optimized and accessible. SmartProduction
helps you optimize data sets and the use of DB2 data bases used
in the online systems, resulting in increased online availability
and faster online response time.
- Improve
Application Efficiency. Many
site-developed and vendor-provided programs and utilities are
not as efficient as they can be. SmartProduction reports on significant
inefficiencies caused by such programs, and provides tuning solutions
for improvement.
- Reduce
the Frequency and Cost of Failures. Job
failures cause the batch workload to take significantly longer
to complete. For some sites, it is a major case of batch performance
problems. SmartProduction provides statistics as well as details
on the frequency and impact of the different types of failures,
and reports on jobs having poor availability.
- Optimize
Backup Procedures. Batch
tasks (jobs, steps or specific functions) that require certain
physical or logical resources are frequently delayed or slowed.
Optimizing backup procedures can significantly reduce backup elapsed
time, backup window time, and usage of system resources.
Note: Additional
comprehensive backup optimization suggestions can be obtained using
our SmartAnalyzer backup reliability analysis software. The SmartAnalyzer product line identifies exposures and
inefficiencies in the way that your business data is backed up. Click here for more information.
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4. What is the typical savings achieved with SmartProduction?
SmartProduction
provides elapsed time savings by reducing the batch window by as
much as 30%.
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5. What type of organization would benefit from
the use of SmartProduction?
Any organization running a significant batch workload that must
be completed by a specific deadline would be a candidate for SmartProduction.
In many cases, organizations are motivated to review SmartProduction
when the batch window interferes with the start of online processing,
or resource consumption exceeds the amount of capacity available
on the processor.
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6. What person/group within an organization would use SmartProduction?
Following are examples of SmartProduction users
at various organizations. If you do not see your area here, please
contact us to learn how SmartProduction may provide benefit to your
organization. We would be happy to set up a web seminar, if applicable,
to discuss your specific needs.
Examples
include:
- Workload
managers
- Application
managers
- Anyone
responsible for meeting SLAs
- Resource
reclamation: Many organizations have created specific task groups to address
the reclamation of resources, in order to defer projected upgrades
or respond to changes in the workload. For example, this may be
necessary when an organization has acquired additional business
units, or business has expanded into different time zones.
- Capacity
planning and scheduling teams and DBAs usually tune on a regular basis. SmartProduction provides additional
insight and information often not available from other resources
and tuning methodologies. Examples include:
- Rapid
response to end-user complaints
- Elimination
of recurring job failures
- Effective
management of storage resources
- Capacity
planning teams also
can use SmartProduction to establish an efficient batch workload,
allowing them to determine a more accurate baseline for current
runtime and CPU and more accurate projections for future resource
needs.
- Scheduling
teams can
use SmartProduction to identify bottlenecks, contentions, and
allocation delays.
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7. What
is the range of production inefficiencies addressed by SmartProduction?SmartProduction
contains almost 400 Knowledge Base cases that allow you to detect
a wide range of production inefficiencies during system analysis.
Its DB2 optional feature provides an additional 60 specific cases
to identify poor performance, inappropriate options and other inefficiencies
in your DB2 batch processing environment.
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8. Is SmartProduction compatible with...
SmartProduction
is compatible with all MVS, OS/390 and z/OS releases from MVS 5.2.2
through the most current version of z/OS. Since SmartProduction
uses SMF records for its input, it will be compatible with all future
releases of z/OS as well.
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9. Does SmartProduction provide a means to graphically view improvements?SmartProduction's Graphical Analysis
Facility (GAF), available with versions 4.1.0 and later, provides
output in a format that can be easily imported into a set of pre-defined
Excel spreadsheets, allowing users to graphically view data generated
on the mainframe via SmartProduction's Global Reports.
From the Graphical Analysis Facility's
Entry Screen, you can select various SmartProduction reports (such
as Executing Slow Utilities) and then import your data in order
to graphically view benefits that can be achieved, such as I/O savings,
by applying SmartProduction suggested changes. As you can see from
the right entry panel, each report has different sheets available
to show potential benefit.
Here you can see the potential I/O savings that can
be achieved by implementing SmartProduction's suggested changes
related to inefficiencies associated with Executing Slow Utilities.
This user can yield a 70-90% I/O savings, reducing I/O by 1.2 million!
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10. We use Workload Manager (WLM) at my organization. Does SmartProduction
identify problems with Goal Mode performance data?
Yes. SmartProduction analyzes
WLM Goal Mode performance data and provides recommendations for
tuning the service definitions and policies. It provides fine-grain
detail on WLM goal mode performance data for each specific period
defined by the user, identifying actual and potential problems requiring
attention. This allows users to easily pinpoint when and where goals
are achieved, exceeded, or have failed, so that WLM definitions
can be adjusted accordingly.
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11. Does SmartProduction support UNIX Systems
Services (USS)?
Yes, SmartProduction provides tuning recommendations
and other significant information regarding the USS workloads. This
support provides execution statistics analyses for jobs, STCs, and
TSO sessions requesting USS services, which may run UNIX programs,
shell commands or scripts, either interactively or as batch jobs.
One of SmartProduction's mainframe-generated reports highlights work
that is running under USS, the resources that are consumed by the
USS workloads, and tuning recommendations regarding the USS workloads.
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12. Is there a way SmartProduction can track the status of job and data set inefficiencies?
SmartProduction provides a State Management Facility -- an easy way to identify which inefficient jobs or data sets are currently being addressed, have already been modified, or should be ignored -- allowing all users to better synchronize and track current conditions.
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13. Can I use SmartProduction to test new applications before they go into production?
Yes. SmartProduction allows you to perform a fine-tuning analysis of your current system data, as well as of new applications still under development that are being tested with small amounts of data. This way, you can identify inefficiencies regardless of their size and impact on your system.
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14. Does SmartProduction tune DB2 applications?
SmartProduction'sDB2 optional feature processes the data in DB2-generated SMF records to provide a detailed analysis and targeted solutions to the batch DB2 issues that slow down the batch window, so you can quickly and easily identify the impact of specific DB2 inefficiencies without performing a lengthy DB2 application analysis. There are more than 40 knowledge base cases that address the tuning of batch DB2 applications.
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