We hear the phrase “thought leader” bandied about a great deal, but what (or who) exactly is a legit thought leader? Business News Daily describes a thought leader “as a notable expert in a specific company, industry, or society. Someone who offers guidance and insight to those around them. In other words, a thought leader has a positive reputation of helping others with their knowledge and insight.”

Steve Pryor, DTS CTO since the early 2000s, is a prime example of a true thought leader. With a background spanning more than 30 years in z/OS software design, development, and support, Steve brings a wealth of experience and expertise to managing DTS’ development efforts. Over the course of his career, Steve has made important contributions to the mainframe software space, designing and implementing major products and components. Steve is a frequent speaker at many industry conferences and has lectured on z/OS storage management topics both domestically and internationally.

So, what do you do when someone of Steve’s stature makes themselves available to you? You tap into that resource as much as possible.

That’s exactly what’s happening at the upcoming SHARE 2022 conference in Columbus, OH, August 21-26. Over the course of the week, Pryor will be delivering three different presentations on z/OS storage management topics.

Reporting with a Tool You Already Own – DCOLLECT (8/23 @9:15am)
Administrators and analysts are often called on to answer ad-hoc questions such as, “How much disk space do certain applications use? What’s the utilization level of some volume(s) or storage group(s)? Where are the backups for these datasets?”

Collecting the necessary information from multiple different sources – disk and tape volumes, DFSMS constructs, DFSMShsm data, can be a challenge. But there’s an often-underutilized resource already available in every data center that can help. Simple IDCAMS DCOLLECT control statements and a few REXX execs or ICETOOL/SYNCTOOL jobs can provide quick, customizable reports on datasets, volumes, and more.

In this session we’ll take a look at DCOLLECT – how it’s used, its various types of output records, and how DCOLLECT output can be filtered and formatted to produce useful information.

SLIP, ZAP, TERSE, XMIT – What’s it All About? (8/24 @ 1:15pm)
New to the z/OS system programming game? Even experienced administrators in other platforms sometimes struggle to understand how some specialized z/OS systems utilities work, or even what they’re used for.

In this session, we’ll examine some of the most common z/OS debugging and maintenance tools, and their typical use in problem-solving and repair. We’ll step through the process of information gathering (SLIP and DUMP), transmitting data to support personnel (AMATERSE and TSO XMIT/RECEIVE), and examining files and applying fixes (AMASPZAP).

Just What is a Storage Group Anyway? – 8/25 @ 1:15pm
One of the four basic DFSMS constructs, SMS Storage Groups are at the junction of disk volumes, tape libraries, system allocation, and backup and migration functions. The way Storage Groups are defined affects the availability of space, the placement and management of datasets, and the reliability of the system as a whole.

This session will examine the types of Storage Groups, their most (and least) important attributes, their relationship to other z/OS components, and the commands and utilities that can be used to alert, display, report on, change, and manage them.

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone at SHARE Columbus and hope you can join us for any (or all) of our three presentations. Be sure to stop by booth #404 to say hello and talk z/OS storage management with the experts. While you’re there, receive a free analysis of your DFSMS ACS routines by expert storage management engineers, which will include suggestions on how to improve ACS routine efficiency, reliability, and readability.

For more information on SHARE Columbus visit https://www.share.org/Events/SHARE-Columbus-2022/Schedule-at-a-Glance.