Mainframe, MVS and zOS Discussion

Where can I steer to learn about tuning techniques in mainframes? Are there some red book tutorials available for this?

Any help is welcome.

The first thing you need to know is that "tuning techniques" (also known as performance management) for mainframes is a VERY large topic! I Googled z/os performance and got back 74,300,000 hits. Googling z/os tuning returns 2,640,000 hits. Unlike an Intel / Windows / Unix server, the mainframe is designed to run at 100% CPU utilization for long periods of time while providing good throughput so performance management has been a big part of mainframes for many, many, many years.

The next thing to know is that performance management tends to be specialized -- there is DB2 tuning, WebSphere tuning, IMS tuning, and so forth. Sometimes tuning a subsystem has a negative impact on the overall system (for example, allocating too much memory for DB2 storage pools allows DB2 to run nicely but other tasks on the system are slowed as a result). So you may need to think about whether to look at subsystem tuning or the z/OS overall system tuning.

The next thing to know is that the Workload Manager (WLM) product provided by IBM is used extensively in performance management. It allows you to define the various workloads on the system (batch, online CICS, online IMS, online DB2, started tasks, OMVS -- Unix -- processes) and define performance goals for each. There are WLM manuals in the MVS bookshelf for your release of z/OS, but you'd probably be better off looking at the WLM Redbooks first (http://www.redbooks.ibm.com and search for Workload Manager).