z/VM 6.3, z/VM 6.2 and z/VM 5.4 are approaching end of service

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IBM Doc Buddy now has Linux and z/VM messages

IBM Doc Buddy is a mobile app that allows for retrieving explanation on IBM z error message codes. Now you can also get Linux and z/VM messages offline explained with this app.
You can get the application from Apples Appstore or from Google Play, depending on the mobile device you use.

The information is the same as in the books (note that Ubuntu and Red Hat don't have included the message numbers yet):

• Kernel Messages on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP1 - SC34-2747-01
• Kernel Messages (Kernel 4.4) - SC34-2599-11
• z/VM: CP Messages and Codes (6.3) 
• ...

You first have to download the messages for the "component" you want. To do that touch the button in the upper left corner and then select the respective component. Then you can start typing into the search field and select the message of interest:

Setup screen

Select component

search

Get result (can be scrolled!!)

Performance whitepapers for IBM Enterprise Content Management with Filenet for Linux on z Systems

IBM has a good portfolio of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) products. One of them is IBM FileNet. Storing a lot of data and finding content is something that z Systems does really well. So after the first whitepaper concentrating on FileNet there is a new paper that adds IBM Content Navigator and IBM Spectrum Scale (formerly known as GPFS) to the mix.

This new paper is split into two parts:

• The first part with the title "IBM Enterprise Content Management for Linux on z Systems Scale-Out Case Study (Part 1): Single ECM Node with XFS and IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2" is available on Partnerworld (direct pdf download).
• I'll update this post as soon as the second part is available

How to submit requirements for LinuxONE, Linux on z Systems, z/VM and KVM on z Systems

KVM as well as LinuxONE is now part of the " Request for Enhancement (RFE) Community". So as described in my earlier post you can now also submit requirements for LinuxONE and KVM to IBM. To do this open the  community start page and then select  the "Submit" tab.
After entering in your IBM ID, you can fill in your requirement. In the product pull down please select one of:

• Linux on System z
• IBM LinuxONE
• KVM for IBM z Systems
• z/VM

Fill in the other fields as good as you can and then click on submit.

Canonical is handling requirements for the Ubuntu distribution through Launchpad. Open a bug there, put requirement in the title and tag it with s390x.

Red Hat has a defined RFE process for their customers. So after logging into RHN follow the instructions to submit a request.

SUSE requirements can be submitted to their sales reps as well as using  the "feedback" button at the bottom of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z web site.

(Updated 6/28/2016)

z13s

IBM announced the new version of the business class  mainframe called z13s.  This is the successor to the zBC12. You can find the detailed announcement letter here.

z13s glas model - photo Michael Storzer

From a Linux perspective the IBM tested platforms has been updated to include z13s. SUSE has published the certifications:

• SUSE certifications: SLES11 SP3, SLES12
• Red Hat certifications: RHEL6, RHEL7

Also announced are

• z13 enhancements (see announcement letter) including a new administrative mode for Linux called IBM Dynamic Partition Manager (DPM)
• KVM for IBM z Systems V1.1.1 with a planned availability of 3/18/2016, see my separate post.
• z/VM PTFs for exploitation APARs  (see announcement letter) providing e.g. also SIMD support for guest exploitation (VM65733)
• z/VM 6.4 preview announcement

Useful links:

• IBM Redbooks:
• IBM z13 and z13s Technical Introduction, SG24-8250-01 
• IBM z13 Technical Guide, SG24-8251-01
• IBM z13s Technical Guide, SG24-8294-01 
• z13s FAQ
• 3D demonstration of the system (you can interact, open doors, get explanations etc)
• Large Systems Performance Reference for IBM z Systems updated with z13s data
• Common Criteria Certification at EAL5+ level for LPAR

(updated 10/21/2016)

The Virtualization Cookbook for IBM z Systems - updated

The Redbook "The Virtualization Cookbook for z/VM 6.3, RHEL 6.4 and SLES 11 SP3" and the corresponding code examples got an update to the latest distribution levels. They have also reorganized the material into three different books, which I personally don't like that much - but others say this is the way to go.

• Volume 1 - z/VM 6.3 -- pdf
• Volume 2 - RHEL 7.1 -- pdf
• Volume 3 - SLES 12 -- pdf 
• code examples as tgz 

z/VM 6.3 achieves common criteria certification at EAL4+ level

Earlier this year z/VM 6.3 including SSI (single system image) has achieved the EAL4+ certification from the German BSI (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik).
All z/VM certifications can be found at the "z/VM Security and Integrity Resources" site.

Support information for IBM storage products

All the supported combinations for IBM storage can be found in the IBM System Storage Interoperation Center (SSIC).
For Linux on z the best way to get the number of combinations down is to first select "IBM z Systems" as the host platform and then continue with the storage family.

Very important: if your combination isn't listed there, please get a "Request for Price Quotations (RPQ)" submitted by your IBM rep as described on the SSIC start page.

Middleware / application testing - operating system, hypervisor and hardware

After the IBM statement of directions to support KVM on System z I've been asked many times for a criteria if a certain ISV software or customer solution needs to be retested or not. As in performance the answer is: it depends. Basically there are two / four different types of applications / products to consider

1. No retesting needed - certified and tested towards the operating system:
   Applications that use a standard API only, like Java or standard library functions that don't need and exploit the visibility of the underlying (virtualized) hardware.
2. Retesting recommended - certified and tested towards the operating system:
   Applications that do interact with virtualized hardware to a certain extend e.g. accessing raw devices.
3. Retesting and some coding needed - certified and tested towards the operating system and the virtualization layer:
   Applications that actively interact with the hypervisor, e.g. by vmcp commands under z/VM. They then needs an equivalent implementation of that kind of functionality for every type of virtualization. Other examles are the use of zLinux hypfs (hypervisor file system) or using the hypervisor details surfaced in /proc/sysinfo.
4. Retesting and additional code for the hypervisor needed - certified and tested towards the operating system and the virtualization layer:
   Applications that need hooks and special interfaces into the hypervisor e.g. for monitoring or systems management. Every new hypervisor will require new code as e.g. the reported performance metrics and systems management interfaces are different

For Linux on the mainframe today there is only z/VM and LPAR. And z/VM is really virtualizing the hardware in a 1:1 fashion as good as possible (with a lot of firmware and hardware support to keep the overhead to minimal levels).  For such a hardware virtualization the category #2 is nearly not existent. If there is no active interaction with hypervisor, no retesting is needed.
KVM has the concept of new virtual devices with new device names, so some products from #1 are going to slip into category #2.

(updated 4/15/2015)

z13

New Whitepaper "IBM Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1 for Linux on System z - Performance and z/VM Resource Management"

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence is an interesting workload for zLinux environments. This new whitepaper covers setup and some of the performance and tuning aspects for this in a zLinux / z/VM environment.
As an add on it also takes a look at the z/VM resource manager (VMRM) for helping to distribute the CPU capacity between competing workloads.

Request for Enhancement (RFE) community launched including Linux on System z and z/VM requirements

The Request for Enhancement (RFE) community has been used for IBM Software products for a while. Now also the Systems and Systems Software including Linux on System z and z/VM have been included there. Up to now requirements have only been discussed internally - this is now open to everyone with an IBM ID. In my opinion this is really good.

This community is meant for submitting and discussing requirements and feature requests for specific products. In the community please select "Linux on System z"  for zLinux requirements and "z/VM" for z/VM requirements.
Also feel free to comment and vote for already existing requirements!

Who is going to submit the first one in the categories?

Installation of Linux on System z

Now and then I get the question on documentation for the base installation of Linux on System z. As this depends on the distribution, take a look at the documentation from the distribution partners first:

• RHEL 6 installation guide the System z specific topics are in Part III
• SLES 11 deployment guide - the System z specific topics are in Chapter 4

There is also a Live Virtual Class with a demonstration of some of the access methods. Charts and a replay are available for this.
The installation is also covered in several Redbooks, e.g. The Virtualization Cookbook for z/VM 6.3, RHEL 6.4 and SLES 11 SP3. 

Raw ECKD access from zLinux

Since a while the Linux DASD driver has been enhanced to access full ECKD tracks. Basically the following steps are needed:

1. Take the device offline from other System z operating systems
2. get the device online in zLinux 
3. switch the device in raw ECKD mode:
   echo 1 > /sys/bus/ccw/devices/<device ID>/raw_track_access
4. use a program that reads and writes whole tracks (64k) with direct IO like a dd with the respective flags to read or write

More details can be found in the chapter about the DASD driver (search for "raw_track_access") in the "Device Drivers, Features, and Commands" book for the respective distributions, e.g.

• Device Drivers, Features, and Commands on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 - SC34-2595-03
• Device Drivers, Features, and Commands on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 - SC34-2597-04
• Device Drivers, Features, and Commands (kernel 3.11) - SC33-8411-22 

This book is really recommended as a reference.  

New Whitepaper covering IBM Filenet P8 on zLinux

IBM Filenet P8 has been available for zLinux for quite some time. It's a really scalable document management, content lifecycle, and workflow platform. This is then used by Enterprise Content Management or Business Platform Management software. With that solution you can keep all the data secured on System z.
The new whitepaper "Linux on System z and IBM FileNet P8 5.1 Setup, Performance, and Scalability" (pdf version) covers in the performance and scalability on zLinux. It turns out that this is a solution well suited for the System z platform.

New Whitepaper "Implementing A Web Interface For The Linux Health Checker"

The Linux Health Checker is an IBM initiated open source project hosted on Sourceforge. It's a command line tool with an increasing number of plugins to find potential problems and wrong configurations before anything happens.
The new whitepaper describes how to automate the command line tool and collect all the reports from the whole z/VM in a singe web interface.

Updated Whitepaper: WebSphere Application Server - Idle Server Tuning

When running in a virtualized environment like z/VM it's beneficial if the hypervisor knows if a server is idle or not. Usually this is implemented by waiting a certain time before considering a server truly idle. The problem is that many of the applications and middleware products do housekeeping tasks way too often for this to be really effective. So any effort to lower this "noise" is good. The updated whitepaper "WebSphere Application Server - Idle Server Tuning" provides tuning suggestions for a Websphere environment to reduce this noise.
On top they also provide tuning recommendations to reduce the startup time. The team updated the paper to cover WAS v8 and v8.5.5 including the Liberty profile.

zBC12

On July 23rd IBM has announced the new business class model of the mainframe the zBC12. This is the successor to the z114 and is as you probably already guessed by the naming scheme build with the zEC12 technology.

From a Linux perspective the IBM tested platforms has been updated to include zBC12. Also Red Hat and SUSE updated their web sites to include the certifications:

• Red Hat certifications: RHEL5.8, RHEL 6.3
• SUSE certifications: SLES10 SP4, SLES11 SP2

Other useful links:

• IBM zEnterprise BC12 Technical Guide (Redbook) 
• zEC12 and zBC12 FAQ
• Red Hat promotion, SUSE promotion
• z/VM required service 

(updated 8/8/2013)

z/VM 6.3

After a long waiting time IBM released the latest version of z/VM. Now there is way more information available than just the little bit I described in my preview. 

• z/VM 6.3 general information (including all new features)
• announcement
• data sheet
• statement of direction
• special z/VM 6.3 resources page  
• "z/VM Version 6 Release 3: Making Room For Your Growing Business" in Enterprise System Journal 
• Updated z/VM performance report
• z/VM platform update Live Virtual Class and charts

The major items haven't changed from the preview - it's CPU scalability using Hiperdispatch and support for 1 TB per z/VM instance.

The announcement also has a statement of direction for z/VM 5.4.  Basically it says that the current System z generation (EC12 /BC12) will be the last one that's supported with z/VM 5.4. And support for z/VM 5.4 will end whenever the z9 hardware support ends. So it's time to plan for the upgrade to z/VM 6.3.

(updated 9/21/2013)