Vision v8.8 for z/OS Virtual Tape by IntelliMagic

IntelliMagic, Inc. announced Vision for z/OS version 8.8.

This major release advances the ability of performance and capacity teams to efficiently maintain continuous availability and reduce costs.

Company’s software has a built-in fundamental understanding of how workloads, logical concepts and physical hardware interact. By embedding human expertise into the software, the potential of the SMF and RMF data is unlocked to better accomplish critical performance and optimization objectives.

The software detects performance and configuration risks before issues impact production. It also enables users to find true root causes quickly and reliably. Furthermore, it highlights where there is tangible potential for optimization, and ultimately it gives IT staff what they need to deliver a new level of application service reliability at optimal cost.

The initial version of Vision for z/OS was created to provide this type of support for I/O performance from the disk and replication infrastructure. Over the years, the scope of the product grew to also support IBM and Oracle STK VTLs, as well as key systems components such as the processor complex, coupling facility, XCF and many other aspects of the z/OS infrastructure.

With this release, Vision adds visibility into Virtual Tape Volume (VTV) Exposure for Oracle VSM. It is a solution that provides visibility in the performance of tape replication. It shows how much tape data will be lost in case of catastrophic disaster.

Furthermore, Vision supports Oracle VSM Buffer Policies. When there is not enough disk storage for the workload, the virtual tape system will start to request many physical tape mounts, and it can quickly reach a situation where the physical tape mounts become a bottleneck for the overall tape performance. IntelliMagic Vision monitors whether or not the Oracle VSM buffer is large enough to allow the VTVs to stay in the buffer according to the policies configured and alerts before performance issues can occur.

This release also provides the ability to track virtual volume consumption over time. The trending is based on daily processing of the tape management catalog, which allows IT staff to identify which applications are causing tape consumption growth over specific periods. This highlights unusual behavior as well as new applications creating additional tape consumption demand.