IT Operations Checklist for z/OS Mainframes

Read this eBook for a comprehensive start to ensuring the health, availability, and security of your z/OS mainframe systems. Explore how new technologies have emerged that enable you to capture mainframe information and quickly move it to an open-system based analytics platform to be integrated, correlated, analyzed, and visualized.

Introduction

For the past several decades, monitoring the overall health of IT components running on IBM’s z/OS mainframe has been left to a number of vendors specializing in real-time monitoring of performance and availability. Although they have done a more than adequate job with deep-dive analysis into the individual technology silos, there are has remained a gap in the overall approach to providing an integrated and holistic view of IT operations within the mainframe world.

There are a number of different data sources that are available within the IBM z/OS mainframe that can be leveraged to provide insight into the operational health of the system and applications as well as providing visibility into security and compliance issues. For example, the System Management Facility (SMF) on z/OS collects and records a large amount of information on performance, security, and technical operations. Tera-bytes of very useful information can be recorded daily. Virtually every operational event that occurs on the mainframe — from a simple log-in attempt at a particular workstation to a potential breach of system security — is captured and recorded in one or more SMF record types. Every transaction across CICS, Db2, and WebSphere MQ results in an SMF log record being created. And it doesn’t end there: anything that occurs on z/OS — network activity, file transfer operations, and more — has some type of related log information that can be used to gain operational intelligence.

The challenge has been – how to easily extract and analyze this data to answer the questions that need to be answered. Today most organizations must rely on a variety of tools and processes to answer some of the critical questions related to the health and security of their mainframe infrastructures:

• What is the health of my IT infrastructure?
• How well are my applications performing?
• What problems are impacting availability?
• Are we meeting our established Service Level Agreements (SLAs)?
• Are our IT services meeting the expectations of our customers and end-users?
• Are we exposed to potential security threats?

[sc name=”callout-darkPurple” ]In this eBook we will take a look at some of the types of things that can be monitored along with sample dashboards that demonstrate these capabilities. We’ll call this our IT Operations Checklist for z/OS mainframes, and although it is not the entire list, it is a comprehensive start to ensuring the health, availability, and security of z/OS mainframe systems.
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