As in all aspects of life, when it comes to the mainframe ecosystem there are givers and there are takers. Sure, rule number one is we’re all in business to make money for the company. But a side note to that is we’re all fighting the same battle against a general lack of knowledge and acceptance of the mainframe outside the confines of the mainframe ecosystem. If we had a dollar for every time we heard, “the mainframe is dead,” we could all go on vacation!

A Year to Rebound
A bright, shining light in the mainframe space in 2022 was a successfully completed schedule of face-to-face conferences and trade shows held around the globe. DTS was a proud sponsor of several key events, our CTO Steve Pryor was once again a sought-after speaker, and our team was thrilled to be able to attend them in person.

But one thing we heard over and over is that it is becoming harder and harder to generate revenue from new mainframe software sales. So, what did one of the larger vendors in the space do? They raised their rates as much as 40%. Will it work? Time will tell.

It’s up to all of us to be advocates for the IBM Z® space – and even for our competitors to some degree – to keep the mainframe industry strong and relevant across all of IT. So, when we hear about business practices outside what is considered the “accepted norm,” we think it’s cause for alarm.

At DTS, our goal has never been to be the biggest software vendor. Just the best. This means, among other things, keeping our rates at a fair level and NEVER jacking them up exponentially once a customer becomes dependent on our products.

Complimentary Webinar Series Pays It Forward, Paves the Way for Efficiency
Another way DTS stands out from the field is our Complimentary Monthly Educational Webinar Series. We talk a lot about the importance of the transfer of knowledge to the next generation of mainframers. This is one of the many ways we contribute to the collective knowledge base of the industry, and we’re thrilled when the knowledge gained results in real savings and operational efficiencies for our customers.

Case in point, after attending one of our free webinars, an existing client was convinced we could provide the solution they’d been looking for, both in problem-solving assistance and upgrading legacy code without learning less-utilized coding languages.

The client is one of the largest international communications companies in the world, supporting hundreds of thousands of users, and the data and applications those users consume. But like many mainframe shops of today, they lacked extensive knowledge of assembler and PL/1 languages.

They had many obsolete, highly customized installation exits from decades past and were having a specific problem involving emergency logons to TSO. You can read more about how DTS engineers were able to formulate a quick, user-friendly solution to rewriting legacy exits, saving the client time, money, and frustration in this Case Study.

With our Easy/Exit product and a team of seasoned storage management experts behind it, the client was able to continue operating within their existing z/OS® environment, avoiding a costly mainframe hardware upgrade with services.

More Efficiency with Automated Storage Management for Fortune 500 Financial Client
Another recent success story is from a Fortune 500 client who came to us looking for help in their IT modernization initiatives. Their legacy systems were governed by JCL dating back decades, and they needed software that could help them update code without taking up much of their systems administrators’ time and effort.

This client has been in business for nearly half a century and has a vast IT environment with a dozen production systems and many more test LPARs in several data centers across the US, along with hundreds of analysts and tens of thousands of end-users. As one of the largest financial services organizations in the world operating in a heavily regulated industry, disruptions, downtime, and noncompliance were unacceptable.

They needed help implementing automation for their repeatable storage management tasks, which freed up human resources so they could focus on other more valuable modernization initiatives. The solution needed to be easy to learn, quick to deploy, and come with a competitive total cost of ownership.

Our ACC (Allocation Control Center) Monarch solution was deployed to enable them to run more reliable jobs with fewer failures while enforcing SMS standards and preventing unwanted time and resource-consuming disk allocation and space errors. With ACC Monarch, the financial services company was able to automate much of its workflow so that its programmers no longer had to manage dataset policy through a series of emails and memos.

According to their Datacenter Manager, “DTS helped us standardize and automate some modernization initiatives we had taken on. Their policy rules engine was simple and pretty straightforward, enough so that our less-experienced storage admins could manage batch jobs without interrupting more seasoned programmers who had the JCL experience.” You can read more about it in this Case Study.

Better Products. Better Pricing. Better Vendor.
DTS Software has been a leader in storage management for over 30 years. We know that to be around for another 30 years, we have to do business with integrity with an eye on much more than just our bottom line. Contact us at info@dtssoftware.com to schedule a demo or start your free one-year trial of any DTS product.

As a pioneer, thought leader, and recognized authority in z/OS storage management, DTS Software is committed to the advancement and permanence of the mainframe ecosystem. One of the ways we contribute to the collective mainframe knowledge base is with our monthly, complimentary educational webinar series.

We strongly believe the transfer of knowledge from experienced mainframers to the new generation is critical. As the current generation moves on, and with the well-documented hiring gap, a tremendous amount of know-how gained from years of hands-on experience is potentially lost. Some of which the books can’t (or no longer) teach.

Debugging and Maintenance Tools
Whether new to the z/OS® system programming game or an experienced administrator in other platforms, programmers sometimes struggle to understand how some specialized z/OS systems utilities work or even what they’re used for.

In a recent webinar, now available on-demand, DTS CTO Steve Pryor examined some of the most common z/OS debugging and maintenance tools (specific to the IBM environment) and their typical use in problem-solving and repair.

In this webinar, Pryor stepped 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).

Problem-Solving Skills Are Your Foundation for Success
One of the most important tasks any system programmer does is problem-solving: identifying the problem and making recommendations for how to fix it. But what are the most widely used debugging tools and how are they put to use?

Whether the problem is inherent in the code or caused by something operational, typically when talking about debugging, we’re talking about dumps. These are most often in the form of symptom dumps, but other types of analytical data (SLIPs or activity traces) can come into play.

An in-depth discussion ensues.

Knowing What to do With the Data
Once the analytical data has been compiled, solving the problem may be as easy as referencing an error message or abend code in the Messages and Codes manual. There are several digital resources available to speed up that process, and Pryor discusses those as well.

Solving the problem might require sending the data to your ISV for an answer and it could require sending the data to IBM for assistance.

Real-World Examples and Additional Resources
It’s no secret that learning by example is a proven methodology. Pryor’s webinars always include real-world, on-screen examples of the topic, and he once again delivers.

As he does with each webinar, Pryor provides information on key reference resources available for those who need it. Steve also makes himself available as an additional resource and can be reached at steve@dtssoftware.com.

Learn More in Our Webinar Available On-Demand
“SLIP, ZAP, Terse, XMIT: What’s It All About?” is a 60-minute informative and educational look at an important topic in the mainframe space. It includes numerous examples, how-to guides, and information on where to find manuals on the subject should more in-depth problem-solving material be required.

 If you weren’t able to attend or would like to review the material presented, you can view it on-demand and download a copy of the slide deck by using this link. Be sure to join us each month for our complimentary webinar series. Go to www.dtssoftware.com/webinars for more information.

Having just returned home from a busy conference season, it’s apparent that it’s becoming harder to generate revenue from new mainframe software sales. The commercial market sees this, and some vendors’ response is to raise software renewals at alarming rates.

We’ve heard tell of certain vendors raising rates at renewal by as much as 40%.

For those of you caught victim to this practice, DTS Software is here to say we are wholeheartedly against this way of doing business. We know the strain a significant renewal increase puts on your IT budget, and will never jack up our rates after you’ve come to rely on our products for your mission-critical business functions.

DTS has been in the business of mainframe software development for over 30 years, and all our software is still developed in-house by mainframers who have been in the industry for decades.

What’s more, because DTS uses 100% in-house development, our customer support team consists of the people who develop and use the software we sell to our customers every day. When you call DTS support, you get a qualified expert from our core team on the phone 100% of the time.

Because our developers are seasoned pros in the mainframe business, they’ve used (or helped build) the most popular mainframe software tools on the market and have developed a suite of DTS products that can replace software you may be currently using from one of our competitors.

We’ll put our products up against any of our competitors and are confident not only will they do the same thing your current software can do for less, but they also come with the customer support you won’t find anymore at our big-name competitors.

Take a look at the table below to see our current offering of products we’ve developed to replace software from the other vendors on the market.

Solution Replacement Options by Vendor

Broadcom/CA

BMC

Trident/IBM

All of these products install dynamically, without the need for SMP expertise, making installation and maintenance simple and easy. There is no complex “framework” – just a straightforward function. Both CA and BMC products require esoteric expertise in their complex architecture just to be able to do basic installation and maintenance tasks.

We care about making money, but we know that we only succeed when our customers do, which is why we have opted to make our replacement products affordable and easy to use, and with none of the unexpected price hikes you’ll see from larger corporations.

Connect with one of our team members today to talk about our suite of replacement products and see for yourself how easy and pain-free replacement and installation is with DTS.

The PARMLIB dataset is arguably the single most important dataset in a z/OS® enterprise. Controlling everything from system initialization, tailoring, catalog operations, and storage management to security, automation, console functions, and more, the PARMLIB concatenation is critical to z/OS functioning.

In a recent webinar, now available on-demand, DTS CTO Steve Pryor covers the importance of the SYS1.PARMLIB concatenation of datasets. Akin to where you’d find “init files” in the Linux and open-source worlds, but a bit more complicated in z/OS, there is a multitude of PARMLIB members that touch everything throughout the system.

While he couldn’t cover all 80+ members in a single session, Pryor takes a look at some of the most important members that affect system configuration (IEASYSxx, LOADxx,  PROGxx, IEASYMxx, IKJTSOxx) and storage management (ALLOCxx, DEVSUPxx, IGDSMSxx, and IGGCATxx). In addition to discussing the PARMLIB concatenation, Pryor also talks about filtering (to handle multiple systems) and the important console commands related to some of the PARMLIB members.

When you consider that each PARMLIB member can contain anywhere from one to several hundred parameters and statements, you get a sense of the amount of information that can be contained in SYS1.PARMLIB.

Where Does SYS1.PARMLIB Fit in the System?
The LOADxx member (usually LOAD00) starts everything off at IPL and resides within SYS1.PARMLIB or SYS1.IPLPARM. It can refer to as many as 16 partitioned datasets. The LOADxx member will contain the command to point to the SYS1.PARMLIB concatenation, although there is a SET LOAD command which allows you to switch to a different PARMLIB concatenation after the IPL has taken place.

Once the introduction groundwork is laid, Pryor dives into the nuances of SYS1.PARMLIB. He points out that, due to the lengthy history of SYS1.PARMLIB, you’ll often need to refer to the documentation for instruction on things like coding comments, continuations, where the end of the member is, etc. Because they differ from member to member, he also recommends caution when coding about continuation, comments, and about the end of the member.

Teaching by Example
The remainder of the webinar is dedicated to on-screen instruction. Pryor takes a look at LOADxx, IEASYSxx, IEASYMxx, a multitude of System Programming Members, and PROGxx and some of its associated statements. He then moves on to cover the most important Storage Management Members, Message Processing Members, and many more of the most important PARMLIB members.

The depth with which the topic is covered once again proves why Steve is one of the most respected experts in mainframe storage management today.

PARMLIB Reference Resources
If you need to find more reference material on SYS1.PARMLIB, Pryor once again provides information on key reference resources available for those who need it. Steve is also available via email to answer questions about this topic and can be reached at steve@dtssoftware.com.

Learn More in Our Webinar Available On-Demand
As with each of our monthly webinars, “SYS1.PARMLIB: What It Is, What’s Important, and Why?” is a 60-minute informative and educational look at an important topic in the mainframe space. It includes numerous examples, how-to guides, and references on where to find more information should you need it.

If you weren’t able to attend or would like to review the material presented, you can view it on-demand and download a copy of the slide deck by using this link. Be sure to join us each month for our complimentary webinar series. Go to www.dtssoftware.com/webinars for more information.

What do you get when you combine a technology that, on the surface, many wrote off years ago, but that in reality is growing at an accelerated pace, with a complete paradigm shift toward modernizing how the technology is used? Now throw in a well-publicized lack of young talent to carry it forward as the older generation ages out, and you get opportunity on every level.

Cloud computing isn’t growing at a break-neck pace because it’s that latest fad. DevOps hasn’t taken hold because it sounds cool. And automation isn’t the wave of the future because journalists need something to write about. These are just three of the many ways better software is being developed faster. And as more efficient ways to utilize it are emerging, enterprise IT can continually do more with less.

A byproduct of all this progress is the ever-increasing volume of data generated every second of every day. Accessing, using, storing, retrieving, and archiving data is something DTS has been innovating since our inception in 1991. It’s why we’re trusted by the Global 2000 today.

There’s a big difference between building a technology from the ground up and buying someone else’s work and throwing it into your product mix. As pioneers in dynamic disk space recovery and volume pooling technologies, we are best positioned to apply our technology to solve real-world problems, saving our clients precious time, resources, and often a LOT of money.

How a Software Purchase Saved Our Client From an Expensive Mainframe Hardware Upgrade
One such instance was a client with a sprawling IT environment and data housed in large data centers in the Pacific Northwest. The client is one of the largest international communications companies in the world, supporting hundreds of thousands of users, and the data and applications those users consume.

Like many mainframe shops of today, this client lacked extensive knowledge of assembler and PL/1 languages. They had many obsolete, highly customized installation exits from decades past and were having a specific problem involving emergency logons to TSO.

They needed a long-term solution that addressed the lack of expertise in assembler and PL/1 languages and were looking to avoid a costly mainframe hardware upgrade. After attending a DTS Software Monthly Educational Webinar Series event, the client was convinced we could provide the solution they’d been looking for, both in problem-solving assistance and upgrading legacy code without learning less-utilized coding languages.

In this Case Study, you can read about how DTS engineers were able to formulate a quick, user-friendly solution to rewriting legacy exits, saving the client time, money, and frustration. With our Easy/Exit product and a team of seasoned storage management experts behind it, the client was able to continue operating within their existing z/OS environment, avoiding a costly mainframe hardware upgrade with services.

When asked about their experience with DTS, the Datacenter Manager for this client said, “Some of these exits were older than our younger programmers and we don’t know who did the original assembler coding, nor do we have the expertise to update it. So, it was great that we found a partner with a solution that reduced the headache associated with updating these exits. DTS’s Easy-Exit utility was easy to install, and their policy rules engine gave us a workaround for the assembler and PL/1 problem we were staring at.”

Automated Storage Management That’s Quick to Deploy and Easy to Learn for Fortune 500 Financial Client
Another recent success story comes from a Fortune 500 client who came to DTS Software looking for help in their IT modernization initiatives. Their legacy systems were governed by JCL dating back decades, and they needed software that could help them update code without taking up much of their systems administrators’ time and effort. You can read more about it in this Case Study.

This client has been in business for nearly half a century and has a vast IT environment with a dozen production systems and many more test LPARs in several data centers across the US, along with hundreds of analysts and tens of thousands of end-users. As one of the largest financial services organizations in the world operating in a heavily regulated industry, disruptions, downtime, and noncompliance were unacceptable.

Freeing Up Resources for More Strategic Initiatives
They needed help implementing automation for their repeatable storage management tasks, which freed up human resources so they could focus on other more valuable modernization initiatives. The solution needed to be easy to learn, quick to deploy, and come with a competitive total cost of ownership.

Our ACC (Allocation Control Center) Monarch solution was deployed to enable them to run more reliable jobs with fewer failures while enforcing SMS standards and preventing unwanted time and resource-consuming disk allocation and space errors. With ACC Monarch, the financial services company was able to automate much of its workflow so that its programmers no longer had to manage dataset policy through a series of emails and memos.

ACC Monarch was an ideal fit, as it is a system-level product that can examine each file selected for use to ensure consistent standards across the client’s vast computing landscape. Additionally, ACC Monarch gives users flexible control to easily examine, override and record JCL control statements and warn of incorrect usage, and manage datasets with easy-to-understand policy rules.

One of the many ways we saved them time and human resources was to ensure that standards for VSAM RLS (Record-Level Sharing) attributes and other VSAM attributes were valid and consistent for the datasets they were associated with. This sort of logical enforcement of complex standards (as opposed to merely syntax or validity-checking) is something that is only possible with a flexible policy rules language like that provided by ACC Monarch.

According to their Datacenter Manager, “DTS helped us standardize and automate some modernization initiatives we had taken on. Their policy rules engine was simple and pretty straightforward, enough so that our less-experienced storage admins could manage batch jobs without interrupting more seasoned programmers who had the JCL experience.”

Best-in-Class Products Back by Best-in-Class Customer Service
We take the mainframe support for your business seriously and back it up with a customer service program that is second to none. We consistently receive the highest marks in response time and quality of service from phones manned by actual humans with in-depth knowledge of our products. You won’t realize it until you need us, but that’s when we’ll shine!

The Original Storage Management Experts
To put the power of over 30 years of storage management expertise to work for your business. Contact us at info@dtssoftware.com to schedule a demo or start your free one-year trial of any DTS product.  And be sure to join us each month as we present complimentary educational webinars on topics of great interest and import to today’s mainframer community.

The handling of datasets as they move up and down the hierarchy is a key focus for any data center manager. When a dataset becomes damaged or inaccessible, being able to recreate it from a backup is paramount.

While data center-wide backups are usually performed by the storage management department, restores are often the responsibility of the user. There are many complexities to creating and maintaining backup systems but restoring is often more straightforward. Understanding the programs, mechanisms, and commands involved with creating and especially locating backups and performing restores is an important skill for the z/OS user.

Taking backups isn’t something to be overlooked or done on occasion. The question is who takes them, why are they taken and where do they fit in the storage management scheme? In a recent webinar, DTS Software CTO Steve Pryor discussed the major backup systems (DFSMShsm, FDR, CA-Disk), their functions and operation, and how to restore backed-up datasets.

Basic but Critical Functions
Backup and restore are basic functions, but they are also critical functions, especially for large data centers when a dataset gets damaged, deleted by accident, or there is a hardware failure. This could also apply to entire volumes or storage groups in a disaster recovery situation.

Data Availability Management vs Space Availability Management
Storage management in z/OS is usually divided into two camps: data availability management and space availability management. What is the difference and what are their goals?

The goals of data availability management are to ensure the datasets that are supposed to be backed up are backed up, that they are backed up as frequently as needed, and that they are available to be restored when needed. The lifecycle of a dataset as it pertains to data availability management is short and often several versions are vaulted.

The purpose of space availability management is to ensure sufficient free space is available to allow the production workload to run. This involves managing the dataset’s movement through the hierarchy from primary disk to compressed disk, tape, or even to the cloud.

With space availability management, datasets are deleted off the disk when a backup is completed (usually referred to as migrates or archives). The dataset’s lifecycle is much longer, generally only one or two copies exist, and a recycle function must be performed as the dataset ages on the archive media.

The Most Frequently Used Backup Types in z/OS
Backup types and the programs most widely used to perform backups in z/OS were the next points of discussion in the webinar. Backups are generally taken by data center management, storage administrator, the operators, or by automatic function.

Full volume backups occur when backing up all the datasets in a particular volume. Dataset backups occur when individual datasets are backed up. And one of the most common backup types is an incremental backup, which is typically done on a volume basis. Incremental backups simply mean that only the datasets that have changed are backed up, and these are usually done daily. Other less-frequently used backup types were also mentioned.

From here, Pryor focused on HSM and FDR, two of the most widely used backup and restore utilities. He then took a deep dive, giving numerous examples and how-to explanations, and offered a “cheat sheet” of terminology with HSM versus FDR, which was included in the presentation slide deck.

You Have the Backup, Now How Do You Restore it?
The remainder of the webinar focused on restoring the data when you need to, whether that be from disk, tape, or the cloud. Pryor once again presented a number of how-to examples and discussed the different approaches depending on the utility you are using.

Backup and Restore Reference Resources
If you need to find more reference material on backing up and restoring in z/OS, Pryor once again provided information on key reference resources available to those who need it. Steve is also available via email to answer questions about this topic. He can be reached at steve@dtssoftware.com.

Learn More in Our Webinar Available On-Demand
As with each of our monthly webinars, “How to Back Up and Restore a Dataset in z/OS” is a 60-minute informative and educational look at an important topic in the mainframe space. It includes numerous examples, how-to guides, and references on where to find more information should you need it.

If you weren’t able to attend or would like to review the material presented, you can view it on-demand and download a copy of the slide deck by using this link. Be sure to join us each month for our complimentary webinar series. Go to www.dtssoftware.com/webinars for more information.