Did you know that your CPU and I/O peaks do not coincide, and therefore that sizing for remote copy solutions requires insights in your workload?

The cost of storage hardware is a large portion of the IT budget, even if only a single copy of your data is stored. Disaster recovery requirements and regulations encourage remote data replication, involving more storage hardware as well as costly high-speed telecommunications links to mirror data between two locations. RMF Magic will help you size these links for a remote replication configuration in the zOS environment.

RMF Magic is designed for zOS storage and performance specialists, and for capacity planners responsible for planning zOS storage acquisitions for the cases where an analysis over an extended period of time is required. For instance, for a prediction of how Extended Remote Copy (XRC) will impact the current workload and configuration and to find out how much bandwidth will be needed to support remote data replication, it is not enough to analyse a single observation period.

RMF Magic provides consolidated performance reporting about your zOS Disk Subsystems, even when Disk Subsystems are shared between multiple sysplexes. RMF Magic will provide the information needed to guide your zSeries storage investments, in particular with respect to new performance enhancing technologies such as FICON, Parallel Access Volumes and migration to large logical volumes commonly known as 3390-2.

• Cost remote data replication per workload for cross charging
• Optimise Parallel Access Volume assignment in your configuration
• Provides all the information you need for logical volume consolidation

RMF Magic: Download Brochure

If you would like to find out more about RMF Magic click here or call the Asset & Operations team on 01522 881300.

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The mainframe is the core repository of crucial company data. Increasingly, the mainframe is also at the centre of the networked enterprise - with employees, consultants and customers accessing it for vital information. It must, therefore, be monitored for the threat of external attack, insider threats and for configuration errors from within.

“With the implementation of a z/OS Websphere Application Solution, Norwich Union was looking for a tool to provide real-time alerting within our z/OS RACF environment in order to comply with our policy which mandates the use of Intrusion Detection Systems [IDS] on e-commerce and internet facing environments.” said Jamie Pease, Security Services Team Leader for Norwich Union Central Services.

Norwich Union reviewed its current tool set and found a gap for real time alerting on the effects of an attack. The chosen solution needed to satisfy the mandated policy at Norwich Union and conform to best practice with IDS being provided at three levels: Real time alerting, IP stack integration and Network IDA performance. With the latter two levels already catered for, zAlert was chosen as the leading solution for the provision of intrusion detection in real time.

“zAlert gives real time alerts enabling speedy breach interception and provides a considerable reduction in the running of overnight monitoring and alerting batch jobs,” confirmed Pease.

 

Click here to find out about our current Mainframe Security Portfolio

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The Eleventh CIO Forum hosted by Pinsent Masons and LOCS was held in London on 27th April 2005 . Delegates from a wide range of large organisations in both the public and private sectors attended the event. The event theme was again based around the importance of software assets management and the important issue of compliance (governance).

Deborah Maher of Software Europe explained the principles, financial advantages, risks and benefits that can be obtained by using an audit tool to fully understand the software resident on large mainframe systems.

Our experience has proved that a there is, typically, a huge difference in what an organisation‘perceives’ they have installed and what can ‘actually’ be proved is really out there.

Software Europe's asset tracking solution Dorana is the premier tool for z/OS and Unix software inventory management. Dorana provides a complete inventory of all your System, 3rd party and in-house developed software and accurate usage information.

Dorana`s unique technology resides in the identification engine and the usage monitor. Dorana gathers information of installed software at the Vendor, Product, Option, and Version (VPOV) level and its associated usage on the IBM z/OS and SUN Solaris platforms. Available for SUN Solaris it provide information on components like processor, operating system, memory, disk partitions, printers, net adapters and video controllers.

These powerful components collect data and store it in an industry standard database format for use by the viewing and reporting tool. This intuitive interface offers simple point and click methodology for viewing, querying, reporting and exporting inventory data and can easily highlight:

• Unused and unlicensed software
• Declining usage trends for software products for use in vendor negotiations
• New software products that have been installed as well as products that have been removed
• Training requirements by easily identifying prime users of products.
• Obsolete versions of software and to determine how they are being used.
• DASD space can be saved deleting duplicate or obsolete libraries.

By providing a complete inventory of software and the ability to continuously monitor the usage levels of them, Dorana provides the most complete pro-active solution for everyone concerned with asset management to demonstrate licence compliance, enable software cost reductions and meet the following corporate objectives confidently.

We no longer distribute Dorana.

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