An education offering to augment your Parallel Sysplex training!
Now, System Programmers and Operators can have their own “sand box” to play in as they learn and understand, in a risk-free environment, how a Parallel Sysplex works.
| What is it? |
The Parallel Sysplex Training Environment (PSTE) is an education offering from IBM Training which provides a load-and-go working Parallel Sysplex, complete with workloads and documentation. The offering is designed to improve understanding of how a Parallel Sysplex works, both for Operations personnel and System Programmers.
The Parallel Sysplex Training Environment:
- Provides Operators and System Programmers with an environment where they can do destructive testing and do things they would never do in a production or even in a normal test environment
- Provides detailed exercises, stepping the user through various management and failure scenarios related to the use of Coupling Facility structures
- Helps the user understand why things happen the way they do in a Parallel Sysplex.
| Benefits |
An IBM analysis of multi-system outages indicates roughly 40% of outages are caused by Operator or System Programmer error. It is critical that the people managing the system have a thorough understanding of how the sysplex works.
- The PSTE provides excellent descriptions of how things actually work
- The PSTE provides access to new facilities faster than you would normally have, and with minimal work on behalf of the System Programmers
- The PSTE may be used to drive further sysplex exploitation in all your sysplexes
- The PSTE can be used for basic Operator training.
| What does the education offering include? |
The education offering consists of:
A working 3-way Parallel Sysplex packaged in full volume dump format that can operate using VM guests or natively in logical partitions. The sysplex includes z/OS and the following optional subsystems to complement the production environment
- The latest level of the z/OS Operation System
- The latest level of IMS
- The latest level of DB2
- The latest level of CICS Transaction Server
- The latest level of MQSeries
- A set of batch-driven workloads to drive activity through each of the CF structures
- An installation Guide – the PSTE is already built and packaged
- An Exercise Guide
- One day of on-site education from IBM Training covering the setup and use of the PSTE.
| What are the system requirements? |
The hardware required to run it includes:
- Currently, the PSTE requires 25 3390-3 volumes installed under VM will use approximately 750 MB of processor storage. If installed native, each z/OS LPAR will require about 384 MB and each CF LPAR will require about 256 MB, for a total of about 1.6 GB processor storage. (3 z/OS operating system LPARs and 2 CF LPARs)
- Some facility for system consoles will also be needed
- Access to tape drives is only required for installation
- You will need some mechanism to connect the PSTE sysplex to the network.
- Software licenses for the products it contains: If the PSTE is run on a processor that already has licenses for all the products (either native or under VM), no additional licenses are necessary If z/VM is needed solely to support the PSTE, a discounted license is available.
| How do I find out more information about it? |
For general information contact, Alfons Koenig, mailto:alfons@de.ibm.com
For a subject matter expert contact, Brian Hatfield, mailto:briandh@us.ibm.com
| Expertise you can rely on |
With intimate knowledge of Parallel Sysplex technologies—IBM is the original developer—and thousands of sysplex implementations worldwide, we offer expertise and experience to help you optimize your Parallel Sysplex environment. Furthermore, IBM solutions are designed to help you achieve a more rapid return on investment (ROI).
We can work with you to assess and identify which module or modules can best meet your specific business needs and environment. And we can help enable you to manage, operate and take full advantage of Parallel Sysplex capabilities long after IBM has left the premises.
Parallel Sysplex Training Environment (49KB)
Related links :
Parallel Sysplex Training Path
Server Optimization and Integration Services - IBM Implementation Services for Parallel Sysplex
