The mainframe is an ever evolving platform. New features are constantly being developed, existing components are getting upgrades, and its capabilities are always being extended to meet the world's business demands. As it evolved the Mainframe gained some unique capabilities that you won't find anywhere else, and I'd like to cover a few of those here. We'll start off with the intelligent resource director or IRD. The IRD function optimizes processor and channel resource utilization across LPARs within a single z system. It groups LPARs into an LPAR cluster allowing WLM to manage resources across the entire cluster not just in one single image. IRD has the following characteristics. First, it allows for more flexible LPAR CPU management. Next, thanks to dynamic channel path management, DCM, FICON channel bandwidth, which is primarily used for connections to storage devices, can be moved between disk control units to meet demands as they change. Lastly, channel subsystem priority queuing allows I/O request in the channel subsystem to have priorities assigned to them. This allows for even greater control and flexibility when we have important business objectives to meet. On the network side of things, HiperSockets provide high-speed connectivity between servers in the same physical system. These connections are entirely virtual, so there's no need to run cables or hook connected servers into a networking infrastructure. You define a HiperSocket and then virtually connect it to z/OS Linux or ZVM systems. You can even mix and match, to the OS it looks like a regular networking device. They can now communicate as if they were plugged into a super high speed network switch, except it's all virtual. Up next, HiperDispatch. So when we virtualize the LPARs, when there's work to be done the system looks at the pool of available processors and lines up that specific unit of work with an available processor that can handle it. This is all fine and good, but in some workloads we gain performance by ensuring that the work is dispatched to the same processor as frequently as possible. So there's no wait while we figure out which processor, the work should go on, and we also benefit from reusing relevant data left in the cache from previous operations. It's like landing in the airport and renting a car. If you have to go find the right car each time and adjust the seat and the mirrors and figure out how to pair the Bluetooth to your phone in it, that takes time. HiperDispatch is like having your favorite car parked right outside waiting for you all the time. HiperDispatch really helps WLM in keeping consistent response times, and definitely helps once you start scaling up systems with lots of processors with lots of cores. Now setting up Mainframe hardware can be a fairly complex task. There are just so many definitions and bits of information you've got to manage correctly in order to add storage for example. Fortunately zDAC, the z discovery and autoconfiguration aims to help make that a little bit easier. It can detect certain devices on FICON and storage area networks, and streamline the process of configuring the HCD or hardware configuration definition. This helps to simplify I/O configuration and reduce complexity and set up time. Virtual flash memory, now earlier we talked about storage and how virtual memory means that the memory for a program might go from on-chip memory out to DASD. Well, there's actually an in-between step and that's where virtual flash memory comes in. This is storage class memory that lives in the same physical box as the memory and processors. But can be configured to provide additional support for programs that take a noticeable performance hit when they page data like DB2, Java, and the coupling facility. And then there's zAware. As you know, the Mainframe is constantly gathering data, not just data for business transactions, but information about what's going on behind the scenes. Network configuration changes, LPARs coming up, and going down, software levels changing, new user IDs getting created. And nobody has time to go through all those log files line by line by line and inspect every single thing that happens during the day. Fortunately, zAware which stands for z advanced work load analysis reporter does. It watches everything going on, and compares what it sees with prior system data, highlighting anomalies, and suggesting courses of action. It does all of this in near real time. So you can even use zAware's interface to diagnose the cause of past or current anomalies. As you can see, there's a lot of unique liese features that you can explore and there's always more in the works.
