Pete Clark on z/VSE: z/VSE Event Calendar 2010
by Pete Clark
December 8, 2009
** Read this article online at http://www.mainframezone.com/operating-systems/pete-clark-on-z-vse-z-vse-event-calendar-2010
We’re counting on 2010 to be another excellent year for z/VSE with notable deliverables in software, hardware, education events, and conferences. What follows is the z/VSE 2010 calendar and news from z/VSE Development.
April 9-13, 2010—WAVV: WAVV 2010 will be held at the Embassy Suites in Covington, KY, which is across the river from Cincinnati, OH. The agenda grid with session titles is available at www.wavv.org; abstracts will be posted as they’re completed. Take a look at the session grid for WAVV 2010; these great sessions and speakers are sure to entice you to attend.
April 30, 2010: z/VSE 4.1 will be withdrawn from service.
September 2010—WAVV 2011 planning: WAVV planning sessions are now conducted via Web conferencing in September and October, so be sure your WAVV committee person knows what session topics are important to you and is aware of your ideas to improve the WAVV experience. Go to www.wavv.org for contact information.
October 4-8, 2010—IBM System z Expo: This popular IBM U.S. technical conference will be held in Boston, MA. Knowledgeable presenters will provide excellent content on z/OS, z/VSE, z/VM, and Linux on System z. For more information, visit www.ibm.com.
Fourth Quarter 2010: z/VSE 4.3 will become available. CICS/ VSE won’t ship with this release. More information follows.
2010 Items In-Process
For z/VSE events that aren’t yet scheduled and up-to-date information on events, please visit www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zvse/events/.
The up-to-date schedule for Live Virtual Classes (LVCs) will be maintained on the z/VSE Website at www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zvse/education/#upcoming. Topic selection and session scheduling are currently in the planning stage. If you have suggestions, please send them to me, and I will forward them.
News From z/VSE Development
In October, IBM previewed z/VSE release 4.3, which includes new functionality to address growing workloads, ease-of-use, and other customer requirements. The following is additional detailed information regarding what’s planned for z/VSE 4.3.
Changes to z/VSE 4.3 are as transparent as possible for applications; users can easily migrate to z/VSE 4.3 and exploit the new functionality.
I/O control blocks and supervisor routines, together with VSAM and DL/I areas, will move above the 16MB line. As a result, 24-bit programs will be able to use the space that has been freed up. This will help keep more and larger programs and data in virtual storage and may help some installations consolidate z/VSE images.
z/VSE 4.3 will implement a major customer requirement— four-digit device addresses (cuu). During Initial Program Load (IPL), four-digit cuus are mapped to three-digit cuus. After IPL has completed, the z/VSE system then uses the three-digit cuu only. This implementation ensures your JCL and programs will run without modification. z/VSE 4.3 also provides commands and dialogs that can be used to manage the device address mappings. The four-digit cuu support simplifies the configuration planning, especially if running z/VSE with z/OS, Linux on System z, or z/VM.
z/VSE 4.3 exploits IBM System z10 technology. There are two examples of this. The first includes the dynamic adding (no IPL) of logical Central Processors (CPs) to a running z/VSE system for increased capacity. Later, if this additional capacity is no longer required, the CPs can be removed and used for other systems. The second example is large page support for data spaces, which will improve system performance, 1MB vs. 4K. Both of these enhancements can be used in the LPAR (Logical Partition) environment without any changes to the z/VSE applications or JCL. z/VSE system security remains a key area. In z/VSE 4.3, the Basic Security Manager (BSM) can be used to protect MQ resources. Additionally, access to batch security resources can be logged and reported using System Management Facility (SMF) data.
Some customers might wish to monitor z/VSE resources using performance monitors that run on non-z/VSE platforms. Since z/VSE 4.3 supports the standard network protocol SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), these performance monitors can now retrieve z/VSE status and performance information.
z/VSE 4.3 has support for RPG programs executing on CICS TS. This enhancement also will be available for z/VSE 4.2. z/VSE 4.3 includes DL/I V1.12, (replaces DL/I V1.10, V1.11) and provides 24-bit virtual storage constraint relief.
Statement of Direction
z/VSE plans to provide an IPv6 solution that will address future network needs.
It looks like 2010 will be another interesting and exciting year for z/VSE. Thanks for reading this column; see you all in the next issue.
