Munich 2016 - Z011597 Martin Packer - How To Be A Better Performance Specialist

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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2015

How To Be A Better Performance SpecialistSession z011597

Martin PackerIBM

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How To Be A Better Performance Specialist

Martin Packer, IBM

“Through the door there came familiar laughter

I saw your face and heard you call my name

Oh my friend we're older but no wiser

For in our hearts the dreams are still the same”

Gene Raskin "Those Were the Days"

Derived from Boris Fomin & Konstantin Podrevsky "Дорогой длинною" ("By the long road")

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Abstract

I've spent 30 years doing Performance and Capacity. You'd think it'd seem stale and repetitive by now. Not a bit of it. It's still fresh and interesting.

More to the point I think I'm doing it better day by day, even now. So I'd like to share some thoughts on how you too can become more valuable to your organisation as a Performance Specialist. And how you can have fun doing it.

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What Does Better Mean?

● Not as in Metallica's “Better Than You”:

“Bury me deep when there's no will to beBetter than you (better than you)“

● More like as in Beatles' “Getting Better”:

“I've got to admit it's getting better (Better)A little better all the time (It can't get more worse)”

● Seriously, it's about adding value to your organisation by doing more with what's at your disposal

➔ While not stepping on anyone's toes

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Who Am I To Speak Of This?● 30 Years Doing Mainframe Things

➔ 95% Has Been “Performance and Capacity”

● I see a wide range of customer situations

➔ Across lots of geographies

➔ Many similarities wherever you are in the world

● Interested in fact-based problem solving

➔ Usually little in the way of an axe to grind

➔ Bridge builder rather than combatant

● Shortish Attention Span

➔ Subject to “Principle” Of Sufficient Disgust

● Perhaps overly interested in innovation

➔ Or maybe it's just “rabbits out of hats”

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“Business Is Dull / Evil”

● I got into this industry because I was interested in computers

➔ But life is more interesting once you see what use they're put to

➔ Plenty of technical challenges in support of such uses

● This is a people business

➔ Mostly people trying to do the right thing

➔ Even if you don't bind to the organisation's aims find common cause with the people

➔ “People” includes vendors, customers, consultants

● If you can't relate to / stand the organisation's goals perhaps it is right to move away

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Reasons To Be Cheerful

1) SMF Is Timestamped

2) SMF is well-defined

3) SMF is generally cheap to collect

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Non Modo Sed Etiam *

● Nobody says what SMF is for

● You could stick to what it's always been used for

➔ Performance and Capacity

➔ Maybe Audit

● Or you could find something more inventive to do with it

➔ What follows are just some examples

All are based on SMF

* “Excuse my Klatchian” :-)

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Understand The Regime For Restarts and IPLs

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10 AM / 8PM HSMSpikes

Detect Spikes

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DumpEpisodes

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Glean Topology Information

● Might not be static● Might not be what people say it is● Data might not give you a complete picture

DB2 Data Sharing Group

CICS Subsystems Attached To Each Member

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Service Class Serving Relationships

Velocity =Using

Using + Delayx 100 (%)Velocity =

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Workload Cycles● Perhaps related to Restarts and Spikes

● Understand the business cycles and how they relate to variations in activity

➔ e.g. CPU

Capacity Requirement

Rolling 4 Hour Average

➔ e.g. Minimum Free Memory

● Cycles at all levels

➔ Annual

➔ Quarterly

➔ Monthly

➔ Weekly

➔ Daily

➔ Sometimes “e.g. synchronised every 15 minutes” is important

Night Day

Tune For Both

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Graph Things Differently

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Group Buffer Pool Scalability Example

Not Time Of Day

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Workload Manager Service Class Velocity Example

The Infamous “Trumpet-Shaped” Curve

Service Class % Of An Engine, Not Time Of Day

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Importance

Velocity G

oal

Service Class Period Structure (Velocity)

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Zoom In, Zoom Out

● Some instrumentation goes to arbitrary granularity

➔ For example, DB2 Accounting Trace

➔ Sometimes valuable to “zoom in” to 1-second granularity

Some friends know I like to talk about “sloshing”

● “Zoom out” can be useful, too

➔ e.g. RMF intervals

Zooming out from e.g. 15 minutes to 1 hour, 2 hours etc can show useful “peakiness” behaviours

But most people summarise with 1-hour granularity

Then zoom in to e.g. 15 mins can be useful

● Careful of e.g. 30 mins SMF 30 Interval vs 20 mins RMF

Ugly “on/off” effects

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Character Strings

● You might've got into Performance because you liked numbers

➔ Me too, but names bring things to life● I've had many giggles from e.g. customers' LPAR names

● “We like naming conventions so much we've got many”

➔ Inconsistency in naming conventions is often the start of long diversions on history

➔ And history is important A sense of how things came to be is useful

● Character strings and numbers come together in patterns

➔ Anybody here an expert in Regular Expressions? Of any flavour?

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Things Might Not Be What They Appear

● We bandy about terms like “CPU Utilisation” and “I/O”

➔ But what do they mean?

● Understand Data Better:

➔ How it came to be

➔ What the metrics mean

➔ How the data was handled

➔ Understand how it behaves Warts and all

➔ Dirty little secret: Metrics aren't perfect Infinite accuracy often costs infinite resources Instrumentation, like everything else, carries bugs

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Experiment With Display Technologies

● We're used to SAS/MXG with SAS/Graph

➔ Or, in my case, SLR using GDDM and Bookmaster (DCF)● Graphs and tables aren't the only way of depicting things

● On the web side consider:

➔ HTML(5) Canvas, CSS, Javascript

➔ When I first gave this presentation an audience member suggested DS3● I've used Gantt Charts for many years

➔ Particularly with hours / minutes instead of days● I'm using “mind mapping” software to show inter-relationships

➔ A few slides back showed result of REXX → CSV → iThoughts (on Mac and iOS) Easter 2016 Holiday “hobby project” was CSV to Freemind .mm

– For colleagues without iOS / Mac OS X

● I'm sure there are plenty more useful depictions

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Be A Good Community Member

● Bare minimum is MXG-L Listserver

➔ Very good “Signal To Noise” ratio

➔ Very consumable traffic rate● I'd also recommend IBM-MAIN Listserver

➔ Perhaps less relevant But describes what people are doing with systems you manage

➔ Much higher volume● I'm a big fan of Social Media, too

● Help others

● Learn from others' questions

● Ask your own questions

➔ Questioners rarely give away their installations' secrets● Find Like-Minded People

➔ In 1986 IBM's VM FORUMs saved me from walking out the door

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Widen Your Installation Experience Base

● Easy for me to say

➔ Maybe difficult for you to do

➔ Hard for me to distil what it's brought me into a slide● Every installation is different

➔ Even such things as machine configurations and LPAR layouts

➔ But common patterns emerge e.g. “2-machine with ICFs and CF Duplexing” pattern

➔ And, in my travels, I see much commonality in the people, their motivations and their challenges

My friends in Ataşehir have similar challenges to those at the North end of Simmonds Street

● Might not require a change of installation

➔ Or even job change within the installation

➔ Might just be taking an interest in e.g. the CICS Sysprog's challenges

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Keep Learning

● Keep up to date with your technical domain

➔ If it isn't evolving it's probably the wrong technical domain● Deepen your technical skill

➔ Even if your technical domain weren't evolving● Widen your technical skill

➔ For instance, I claim to have been bluffing my way in DB2 for 25 years :-)

● No advantage in being “the man* who knew too little”

➔ Unless you're going to be a manager :-)

* Excuse the sexism inherent in the quote

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Don't stop me now (yes I'm having a good time)I don't want to stop at all

La da da da daahDa da da haa

Ha da da ha ha haaaHa da daa ha da da aaa

Ooh ooh ooh

Conclusion

● Try and do things differently

● Get as much experience as you can

● Engage with the people and environment around you

● Become an essential source of your installation's knowledge

● Don't look for the quiet life

● But what the hell do I know? :-)

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Metallica's “Nothing Else Matters” - Lyric Extract

So close no matter how far

Couldn't be much more from the heart

Forever trusting who we are

And nothing else matters

Never opened myself this way

Life is ours, we live it our way

All these words I don't just say

And nothing else matters

Trust I seek and I find in you

Every day for us something new

Open mind for a different view

And nothing else matters