A Pragmatic Approach to DevOps and the Mainframe

A Pragmatic Approach to DevOps and the Mainframe

April 10, 2023

Julie CraigResearch Director, Application Management

Enterprise Management Associates

Today’s Speakers

SPENCER HALLMANSubject Matter Expert

Compuware MIPS Management

JULIE CRAIGResearch Director

Enterprise Management Associates

JIM LIEBERTSubject Matter Expert

Compuware Developer Productivity

Agenda

• IT, DevOps, and Business Value• The Mainframe in the Enterprise• DevOps Challenges in the Mainframe-driven Company• “DevOps Ready” Tools in Mainframe Environments• Compuware DevOps Solution and Demonstration• Summary and wrap-up

Slide 3 © 2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.

What is “DevOps”?

• DevOps defined differently by virtually everyone• EMA Definition: “The ideal intersection of people, processes, and

tools necessary to facilitate cross-functional collaboration across the application lifecycle and enable the seamless delivery of applications to the business”.

• Purpose: To optimize levels of service delivered to internal and external customers by efficiently supporting the complexities of modern application ecosystems


• Per latest EMA Application Management research, 80% of companies have DevOps function*• Question: “Does your company utilize a team-based approach

leveraging specialists with cross-functional development and operational skills to address application-related issues?”

• Dedicated in 56% of companies, AdHoc in 44%

• Teams performing DevOps functions typically go by other names: “Application Support”, “Application Management”, “Infrastructure Services”


DevOps Practices: Bridging Silos Across the Application Lifecycle

*Q4 2013

• Application-focused (versus silo-focused) IT• Parallels the customer’s application perspective versus IT’s infrastructure

perspective

• Improved continuity across software lifecycle stages, i.e. Dev to Prod, Prod back to Dev• Collaborative application deployment, testing, support optimize the processes

associated with delivering business services

• “Top down” approach (versus “bottom up” silo approach) reduces time and effort required for root cause analysis of application-related problems• Combining Dev and Ops skills within a single team leads to faster resolution of

code-based AND infrastructure-based production issues

• DevOps is foundation for Continuous Delivery of new software features and functions• Accelerating delivery of software-driven products and features can significantly

impact business bottom line


DevOps Benefits

EMA Research: Better Interactions between Dev and Ops Translate to Higher Revenue Growth


Q: “How would you describe the quality of the overall day-to-day interaction between Development and Operations generally at your company?"

87%

13%

Increased more than 10%

Excellent/Above

Average/Below

Q: “What was the YOY percentage increase or decrease of your organization’s annual revenue compared to last year?”

Agenda



More than Half of Today’s Companies are Running Mainframes


Which of the following technologies does your organization host on-premise?

Virtualization

Data Integration

Mainframe

Linux

Private Cloud

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and/or Enterprise Application In-tegration (EAI)

Middleware such as IBM WebSphere

Other UNIX (Other than Linux)

LAMP

Hadoop

72%

54%

51%

48%

43%

41%

41%

29%

8%

7%

The Mainframe is a Mainstay of Distributed Application Ecosystems


Which of the following types of transactions or applications is your organization running?

Tiered, distributed transactions/applications that span both mainframe and non-mainframe servers

Hybrid mainframe/public Cloud transactions/applications

All of the above

Tiered, distributed transactions/applications that do not access a mainframe

Non-tiered transactions/applications that access mainframe only

40%

22%

18%

12%

8%

DEBUNKED

Mainframe Fallacies Debunked


Doesn’t “play well with others”

“On its way out”

DEBUNKED

“Irrelevant”

Not part of the “Distributed World”DEBUNKED

“Not Cloud friendly”

DEBUNKED

DEBUNKED

Agenda



Top Challenges of Application Support Professionals


• The top three application-related challenges cited by application support teams include:

• Slow performance• Intermittent problems, causes unknown• High fixed costs related to application support

• A majority say “troubleshooting takes too long”• Almost 50% cite a lack of visibility to application topologies and

dependencies

Mainframe-specific Challenges

• Mainframe “isolation” • Lack of physical access to mainframe, consoles, and mainframe

execution information• Mainframe itself centralized and may well be in a different location from

support personnel

• Lack of mainframe knowledge• Mainframe know-how confined to a “select few”• Mainframe operations personnel have unique skill sets and “languages”• Mainframe developers use unfamiliar languages• Concepts such as queues, batch, time-slicing, etc. are a “foreign

language” to non-mainframe personnel

• Bottom line: Mainframe is a “black box” to most application support teams


Agenda



“APM” and the Mainframe: Do you Know What You are Buying?

• APM(onitoring) versus APM(anagement)• Both Monitoring and Management tools measure performance and availability

“End to end” coverage is a subjective term, based on the vendor’s coverage of the application ecosystem

• However management tools ALSO provide guidance for troubleshooting and root cause analysis of application-related issues

• Most Application Performance Management tools have little or no visibility to mainframe execution

• IT professionals tell us:• “With no mainframe support, this is NOT an enterprise tool.”• “The lack of mainframe support was a huge loss of political credibility for me.

Now, this is our #1 gap.”• “We have too many separate applications trying to interact—and they don’t

always work.”


DevOps-ready Tools Have Value across the Lifecycle


Stage Value Proposition

Develop Testing for performance optimization of new applications

Test Pre-prod service assurance

Deploy Release planning, post-deployment service assurance

Manage Performance & availability monitoring, management, and troubleshooting

Assess Monitor/manage and assess service levels (SLM) for continuous improvement

Design Modify existing software based on assessed service levels (or create new software) to continually improve quality of service delivered to the business

Agenda



Smarter tools

Smoother handoffs

19

Application Performance Managementwith Strobe

Quality assurance

Fighting fires Improving existing production

applications

Monitoring new enhancements

Evaluating third party products

Measuring jobs during development

Based on previous data collected this Txn is exceeding the benchmark previously set

Benchmark Date

Drill down to the Profile!

Hyperlinked to the underlying iStrobe Profile

25

26

27

28

29

30

Dynamic text:

• Expert’s opinion on the issue.• The actual suspicious line of code!

31

Static information:

• Provided by the software (in this case iStrobe)• Answers the rest of the who/what/when questions.

32

Static information:

• Reference back to the initial problem resource.

33

34

35

Find & Fix has already built a debug configuration on our behalf.

Clicking on it will start a wizard just to verify the settings.

36

37

Stopped at the suspicious line. Nowwe can use Xpediter/Eclipse to better understand this point in the code.

* Note – since Compuware products share listings, line numbers remain consistent.

39

40

41

Well on our way to fixing this problem:

1. Does the COBOL function need to be in a loop?2. Why is the paragraph executed 500 times in one transaction?

42

Smarter tools for smoother handoffs

43

Agenda



Wrap-up

• Twin tools-related challenges in mainframe-driven companies• “End to end” visibility to transactions and applications• “End to end” visibility to underlying mainframe and servers

“Mainframe ready” APM tools must mesh the two

• Key considerations related to DevOps tools selections• Equipping personnel who have minimal mainframe expertise with the

knowledge they need to do application support• Facilitating smooth communication and interactions between Dev and Ops

across the lifecycle

• Tools decision making• Be aware (“beware”):

Many application-focused tools are not “mainframe ready” Many application-focused tools don’t have the “information sharing” capabilities

necessary to support mainframe DevOps practices

• Objective: Tools unify Dev and Ops to deliver quality applications and services to the business


QUESTIONS?http://www.compuware.com/mainframe

http://www.compuware.com/

https://plus.google.com/+compuware/posts

http://www.linkedin.com/company/compuware

http://www.youtube.com/compuware

https://twitter.com/compuware

http://www.facebook.com/compuware

For more information on Enterprise Management Associates, please go to www.enterprisemanagement.com, or call +1 303-543-9500

Thank you for attendingtoday’s presentation

© 2014 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc.

http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/

A Pragmatic Approach to DevOps and the Mainframe

Technology

A Pragmatic Approach to DevOps and the Mainframe