August 24, 2010 Agenda

8:30 9:00         Registration, Continental Breakfast, and Networking

9:00 9:15         Welcome and Introductions Ben Geolat

10:30 11:30     Finding the Critical Path A Simple Approach

                           Presented by Scott Chapman

11:30  12:00     Introducing MSI Systems Integrators

12:00  1:00       Lunch sponsored by MSI Systems Integrators

1:00 1:45         Building Better Resiliency:  Improve your RTO/RPO for Critical Systems

                           Presented by MSI Systems Integrators

1:45 2:30         Seven Habits of an Effective Capacity Planner

                           Presented by Denise Kalm of CA Technologies

2:45  3:30         The Art of Capacity Planning

                           Presented by Jim Glauert of Express Scripts

3:30                    Closing Remarks

Presentation Abstracts

Building Better Resiliency:  Improve your RTO/RPO for Critical Systems

Are you feeling the pressure for high availability, need quick recovery time without loosing data?  MSI will be reviewing approaches to improving your Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives(RPO).  A discussion around technologies, Service Definition, and Process will help you understand how your critical systems can achieve performance and resiliency.

Finding the Critical Path - A simple approach

Figuring out why a process in a batch window ended late often requires tracing back through the critical path to look for anomalies.  In a complicated batch schedule, determining which jobs are on the critical path can be a seemingly daunting task.  Various commercial products can be used for this task, but they may not be necessary.  The code needed to determine which predecessor jobs constitute a particular jobs critical path is relatively, perhaps surprisingly, simple.

Load Testing Is Easy. Good Load Testing Is Not.  Preparation is the difference.

This paper discusses recommendations and considerations to plan and prepare for valuable performance and load testing.  It includes a guide to identifying and developing the:

1.      Testing Purposes

2.      Roles and Responsibilities

3.      Business Performance Requirements

4.      Scope of Testing

5.      Testing Environment Requirements

6.      Usage Patterns and Transaction Mix

7.      Proposed Test Scenarios

8.      Load Generation Requirements

9.      Proposed Monitoring, Tracking, and Reporting

Once this planning is done the scripting and execution is easy.  Scripting not included..

Linux on System Z

Linux for System z (the IBM Mainframe) has been available for ten years. This involves running tens or hundreds of Linux virtual servers on a single IBM mainframe. Many companies have exploited this technology for server consolidation, cost savings, green technology and reducing the size of their data center. This presentation describes the path Shelter Insurance is taking to implement and exploit Linux on System z. This will include hardware requirements, the virtualization hypervisor (know as z/VM), virtual networking, software licensing, monitoring, and application deployment. As this implementation is more of a journey that a destination, you will also hear about plans to continue exploiting the virtual environment.

The Art of Capacity Planning

There are many technical tools used in capacity planning: spreadsheets that forecast based on historical trends, analytical queuing models that predict performance, SAS data bases of performance data, and graphical tools that ease the presentation of data.  This presentation does not deal with any of them.

 Instead it deals with the role the capacity planner plays in taking the data provided by these tools and applying it to the organization.  Identifying your target audience is an important first step in putting together your plan.  Finding the people in the organization that can provide insight into future direction is an important part of forecasting.  Providing a historical scorecard of past forecasts can provide an indicator of your accuracy or the sudden changes impacting your organization.  Also discussed will be the idea that capacity planning is more than just a historical review that generates a future expectation; it is a chance to shape the future.  While examples used will be based on mainframe data, the principles presented are applicable to any environment.

The 7 Habits of the Highly Effective Capacity Planner

In 1989, Stephen R. Covey penned The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, designed primarily to help people become more effective in interpersonal relationships.  Since performance and capacity planning is so much more than metrics and machines, this paper explores using those same seven habits in the arena of CP/SM job success.  As Covey does in his work, each habit will be explored with stories from the field.  Step up your game and move to successful interdependence.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

Speaker Biographies

Scott Chapman

Scott has been a programmer since the 6th grade.  His love for technical details got him involved with performance testing a mainframe CICS-DB2 application that is the largest application AEP has ever developed.  Over a decade ago, that experience led to him becoming responsible for mainframe performance and capacity where he continually searches out improvements in both application and system performance.  But he never stopped being a programmer.  He has been paid to write code for everything from PCs to an IBM System/36 system to IBM mainframes to WebOS cell phones.  Because he has particular opinions about how performance data should be presented, but no budget for new tools, for the past few years he has been exploring various ways of presenting mainframe data via a web interface.

His passion for building interesting and useful things continues even when hes not on a keyboard as hes also a woodworker.

Mike Giglio

Mike Giglio is a mainframe System Administrator at Shelter Insurance in Columbia, Missouri. He holds respective bachelors and masters degrees in Computer science and computer systems technology from Louisiana State University. Mike has been an MVS and VM systems programmer for over 25 years, working in manufacturing, public utility and insurance industries. Mikes diverse responsibilities have included hardware and software systems administration, user training, infrastructure architecture, and capacity management. Briefly he worked as a university instructor.

In the early 1980s Mike got started in data processing as a very bad COBOL programmer working in state government. He had passed probationary period before his bosses found out how bad of a programmer he was so they couldn't fire him. Instead management moved Mike from applications programming into systems programming where he has worked ever since.

Mike has presented papers at technical conferences including CMG International, SHARE, Sterling Software, Systems Center and CA World.

Jim Glauert

Jim began his career as an off the street systems programmer at McDonnell-Douglas in 1977.  During his career he has been an MVS (predecessor to z/OS) systems programmer, ACF2 security administrator, data storage manager, operational consultant to the Department of Defense, Info/Management (mainframe predecessor to Remedy) support programmer, and capacity planner.  Jim is currently the mainframe capacity planner at Express Scripts in St. Louis.

Denise Kalm

Denise Kalm is a Director of Product Marketing at CA. She has 30 years experience in IT including application programming, enterprise systems management and performance management/capacity planning at Pacific Telephone and Bank of America. Prior to joining CA in 2006, Denise spent over five years at an enterprise management solutions software company focusing on Enterprise Performance Assurance. She is also a regional officer of CMG, a director of CMG National and has held many volunteer positions within that organization.  She speaks frequently and is a contributing author for Measure IT, CMG, Mainframe Executive and zJournal.

Chris Lynn

Chris Lynn has worked in Information Technology for 15 years in the software development, banking, retail, and education industries.  Chris has a Masters of Science in Civil Engineering.  Chris started as a mainframe operator and moved into distributed server administration, Enterprise Systems Management, Network Operations, and through a few more roles into Capacity Planning.