ETJ First Impression: HSM Adminisaurus V3.2 (continued)

Continued from ETJ

By Denny Yost, ETJ Magazine (5-minute read)

…Benefits All HSM Administrators

HSA is designed for utilization in every size HSM environment, from small to massive. Via its menus, HSA has a mix of analytical tools and detail reporting that will benefit expert and/or novice storage administrators. Whether looking for reports on CDS records or in-depth summarizations of failed activity, HSA gives users the critical information they need to manage HSM
effectively and efficiently.

HSA tailors its interface to the security level of the user accessing it. Users with full storage administrator authority to HSM will have full access to all HSA facilities. Otherwise, the user will view a subset of reports and commands.

Business Savings

Properly managed HSM contributes to effective storage utilization and reduces DASD costs by moving dormant data from faster and more expensive storage to less expensive mediums. If HSM is not routinely governed, it can quickly go from keeping storage costs low to wasting valuable CPU cycles and storage resources.

HSA easily locates errors in HSM processing and can establish solutions for error elimination. It can also identify processing patterns and users who are unintentionally compromising HSM’s ability to successfully manage the storage environment.

HSA facilitates immediate savings by identifying tape resources that HSM is not efficiently utilizing, reclaiming the underutilized, recycling the excessive number of tapes HSM is using and eliminating wasted CPU resources when HSM has gone rogue. Common findings include HSM not migrating data enough, or not at all, or being overly aggressive in migrating data, causing
excessive recalls to occur.

Reporting Specifics

HSA contains a wide range of reports to ease the burden of managing HSM that include:

• Full set of CDS record reports displayed in an easy to read format
• HSM activity reporting from log, PDA or SMF sources to support any HSM configuration
• Reports on HSM internals, such as queue contents, parameter settings, resource usage, etc. so you know what HSM is doing in real-time
• Understand HSM’s overall health using reports summarized by:
  – HSM action and return/reason codes
  – High level qualifier
  – Hourly trending
  – Job name
  – User id
  – Automatic function: migration, backup, dump and recycle
• Create repair functions using report results as input.

HSA saves HSM from wasting resources or ineffectively managing the storage environment by using extensive health reporting. Problem areas such as thrashing activity, failures in HSM processing, CDS and data integrity and much more are monitored. A built-in health summary scan identifies current issues within HSM plus detects instances where HSM should have processed data but didn’t. A full CDS auditing and error fix facility—manual and automatic fix capabilities—to identify and correct issues within the HSM environment to ensure data availability. Audits which typically can take hours or days to complete are reduced to minutes. The full-featured and customizable interface supports both batch and ISPF, allowing users to perform any task in their preferred method. In all, over 200 reports and commands are available so the storage administrator can easily manage HSM.

HSA’s functionality can be further enhanced through Dino-Software’s separately sold and licensed Universal Data Manager (UDM) to extend its capabilities and include:

• Enterprise view and management of HSM
• Alert Notification
• Automation
• Monitoring
• Reporting
• Audits
• Corrective actions.

To learn more about HSA, contact Dino-Software at 703-768-2610, or visit www.Dino-Software.com. ETJ

About Dino-Software

Dino-Software Corporation develops enterprise-wide solutions for the management, analysis, protection, and repair of complex z/OS mainframe environments.  Dino-Software has long been acknowledged for its superiority in ICF catalog management and technical support, helping organizations ensure their business-critical assets remain online and recoverable in a disaster.  Learn more about Dino-Software and its z/OS mainframe storage solutions at https://dino-software.com.