z/OS Disk & Replication Performance Management

Monitor Disk & Replication Performance with IntelliMagic Vision

IntelliMagic Vision enables performance analysts to manage and optimize their z/OS Disk and Replication environment more effectively and efficiently.

View the video for an example of those capabilities.

Health insights and exception reports alert you to any aspects of your storage systems that need attention. Hundreds of metrics are automatically assessed for each time interval, and they are highlighted if they are not within acceptable bounds.

In this example, we have a mixture of IBM and HDS storage systems. We see alerts for one HDS system for excessive disconnect queueing and delays and alerts on two IBM systems for throughput higher than recommended by best practices.

IntelliMagic Vision also provides recommendations on what actions to take depending on what a specific alert is encountered.

Daily Health Insights

Time Charts for Deeper Insight

From the exception reports it is a simple matter to drill down to see a detailed time chart of the metric that has been flagged.

This helps you narrow down the time frame when the behavior occurred and correlate this to any application impacts that may have resulted.

Comparison charts are very useful for determining when a particular behavior began and if this is a one-time anomaly or part of an ongoing trend.

In this example, we compare the Disconnect Queuing and delays to an earlier period, and it is easy to see that this is a new behavior. Any further investigation may be limited to the time frame that has been established.

Comparison Charts and Change Detection

Drill Down to Specific Volumes, Datasets, or Address Spaces

From a time chart, there are many drill downs available to see the metric at a more detailed level of granularity.

Here the drill down has too many active volumes. We can see that all the affected volumes are Db2. Thus, it is likely that any application impact may be Db2 related.

The need for continuous availability has made replication a critical aspect of disk storage. Monitoring the health of your data replication is key to meeting both business and regulatory requirements. IntelliMagic Vision tracks key metrics for both Synchronous and Asynchronous replication methods.

For example, with Asynchronous replication, it is important that your remote data does not fall too far behind your production site. The chart to the right illustrates how IntelliMagic Vision can show you your RPO and diagnose when your replication is struggling to keep up.

Track Key Metrics for Synchronous and Asynchronous Replication

Trend Analysis for your Key I/O Measurements

It is difficult to do proper long-term planning without data to inform you of where things stand and where your operations are heading. IntelliMagic Vision provides you with numerous trending charts that help you get a handle on this.

The example to the left shows how the overall I/O Rate and I/O Response Time have been trending over the last year. In this case there has been a modest increase in I/O Rate and a decrease in response time. This can be very helpful when deciding if a storage hardware upgrade is necessary or may be deferred.