8:00-8:45 Registration

8:45-9:00 Annual Business Meeting

9:00-10:00 "Capacity Planning for MS Exchange Applications", Saqib N. Syed, BMC Software, Inc.

Microsoft Exchange is a critical messaging engine for corporate email and collaborative computing, the scale of which requires capacity planning. Thus far however, a rigorous approach for capacity planning of Microsoft Exchange applications has not appeared. This paper presents just such an approach, which brings together relevant measurements from different system and application areas, takes into consideration architectural specifics of Microsoft Exchange, and facilitates modeling of what-if questions.

In the fields of Computer Performance Evaluation (CPE) and Capacity Planning (CP), rapid technology developments are common, as are corporate mergers and acquisitions. It's easy to get caught up in day-to-day crises and to ignore the big picture. So every once in a while it helps to stop what you're doing, look around, and evaluate where you are. Essentially, figuring out where you should be going in the future depends on where you've been in the past and where you are in the here and now. As the new millennium begins, and as CMG celebrates its quarter-century anniversary, now would be an appropriate time for a 'stop-and-look'. Our objective is simply to look at where CPE has been, outline strategic problems that business in general faces, the problems that CPE and CP still face, and to offer, where possible, strategies for success.

11:15-11:30 Break

11:30-12:15 "Who is ISM ?", vendor presentation by Information Systems Manager, Inc. (ISM^TM)

12:15-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:00 "Geographically Dispersing the Parallel Sysplex Using FICON", Dan Kaberon, Hewitt Associates.

As computer systems become ever more vital to conducting day-to-day business, traditional disaster recovery approaches may need to be reconsidered. This talk will first discuss how a dual data center sysplex configuration affects the traditional DR paradigm. It will also discuss some of the technical considerations in designing a workable configuration. The talk will also detail FICON as a principle enabling technology for reducing complexity and costs of using really long cables.

 3:15-4:15 "An Instrumentation Solution for Reliable Three-Tier Applications", Jinsong Ouyang, Hewlett-Packard

With the explosive growth of the Internet, the three-tier computing model has widely been adopted for developing Internet-based applications. In this model, failures can potentially occur anywhere at each tier, and they have to be addressed properly. We present in this paper an instrumentation solution to reliable three-tier applications: in the event of client and server failures exactly-once request-processing semantics is guaranteed. The approach is based on the existing ARM agent infrastructure, and some components are redesigned to provide the reliability control. We describe in this paper the high-level design and implementation of these components in the ARM agent. By instrumenting applications with the ARM API, the extended ARM agent can be used for either performance or reliability management for three-tier applications.

8:30-9:00 Registration

9:00-10:00 "Analysis of Virtual Tape Subsystems", Ned A. Diehl, Information Systems Manager, Inc. (ISM^TM)

10:00-10:15 Break

10:15-11:15 "The Enterprise LAN Trends" , Eddie Rabinovich, Consultant for 3COM Corporation

This paper analyzes trends in enterprise LANs and describes solutions for IT managers considering migrating their Token Ring networks to other technologies. The paper examines forces, influencing the decision to migrate, and offers step-by-step solutions for migration to Ethernet/Fast Ethernet and/or ATM network infrastructures. Especial emphasis is given to technology comparison and manageability issues through out and following the migration process.

11:15-11:30 Break