IntelliMagic Releases Breakthrough Interactive z/OS Subsystem Topology Viewer

Within the z/OS mainframe, CICS, Db2, and MQ are three vitally important components that often work together to support the processing of business applications and data. With the release of 12.10.0, IntelliMagic Vision has introduced an interactive z/OS Subsystem Topology Viewer, allowing performance analysts to visualize and directly interact with subsystem connections.

CICS, Db2, and MQ work together to enable the development and execution of mainframe applications. CICS handles transaction processing, Db2 manages relational databases, and MQ facilitates communication between different components in a loosely coupled manner. This combination allows for the development of complex and scalable enterprise systems on the mainframe platform.

Previously, mainframe analysts lacked a way to easily see and understand those connections in a way that was meaningful. With the release of an interactive z/OS Subsystem Topology Viewer in IntelliMagic Vision version 12.10.0, the relationships between CICS and connected Db2 and MQ subsystems is now automatically mapped to the IntelliMagic Vision graphical user interface, equipped with live drilldown and customize options.

Use Cases

The z/OS Subsystem Topology Viewer helps analysts identify the relationships between subsystems, their supporting CECs and zOS systems, and even down to CICS region levels.

Example use cases include:

• Shorten Mean-Time-To-Resolution (MTTR): Some configuration changes may unintentionally create additional latency. Visual topology views showing changes in the subsystem topology may help identify a change that is coincident with the increase in latency. The visual queues of logical configuration changes using topology views can then be quickly validated with quantitative data from the subsystems and remediation can begin.
• Improved Maintenance Planning: Having traffic flow visibility provides insights into what transactions or subsystems might be affected when doing maintenance on a DB2 member, CICS region, and or MQ subsystem. Having visual information on which subsystems are running on particular Systems/LPARS can also help understand maintenance impacts for systems, and or CEC hardware migrations.
• Traffic Optimization: Understanding the subsystem connections between logical subsystems across physical boundaries (CECs) and logical boundaries (Systems/LPARs) improves analysis of traffic using other quantitative data and helps drive optimizations that capture the benefits of efficient traffic technology options. Technologies such as, SMC-D (Hipersockets), SMC-R, (RoCE) can exploit z/OS system proximity to reduce TCP/IP traffic overheads.
• Training New z/OS Skills: Having a quick and easy way to visualize which CICS transactions are part of sysplexes/systems/CICS regions/DB2 data sharing groups/Db2 members, and MQ subsystems allows staff new to this area to quickly understand connections and relationships.

The video below, extracted from our recent webinar, From Taped Walls to Your PC: z/OS Configuration Made Simple, demonstrates the z/OS Subsystem Topology Viewer.