VSAM Tuning
What is VSAM?
VSAM (Virtual Sequential Access Method) is a mainframe file system and access method created by IBM and implemented in the early 1970s. Many VSAM applications have been written over the past 30 years. This legacy application software represents a large investment that continues to support business needs. Many large corporations have one million or more VSAM files. VSAM files are dependable and they execute almost flawlessly. Due to this feature, VSAM files may not have been tuned for decades. Poorly tuned VSAM files can consume extra CPU processing and disk space, resulting in unnecessary high costs.
Why VSAM Tuning Should Not Be Ignored:
Usually most mainframe applications contain a large number of VSAM files that require tuning. Tuning these VSAM applications will produce savings in CPU utilization, disk space, and reduce elapsed time for long running batch jobs.
Analyzing and tuning VSAM delete/define parameters (parms) will normally require separate manual action by a technical support person. The technical person will need to execute and review the VSAM LISTCAT report and modify each individual delete/define parm for each VSAM file that requires tuning.
This activity would probably take 30 minutes of analysis and editing for each delete/define parm. Then the revised parm would need to be implemented into the test and production environments at an additional cost in person hours. This manual VSAM tuning process is cost prohibitive and adds extra overhead hours which cannot be accommodated in busy, resource constrained IT environments.
How Blue Diamond Can Help:
Blue Diamond’s V-Cutter Tool automates the tuning analysis and execution in order to provide the maximum reduction in CPU use as quickly as possible. This provides the maximum benefit at one time which, in turn, may allow the deferral of the next mainframe upgrade.
The potential cost savings achieved is the deferred cost of the mainframe upgrade. Blue Diamond’s V-Cutter should not be compared with the cost of other VSAM analysis and reporting products which are not able to achieve the complete tuning result, due to lack of automation.
The Blue Diamond Data Management V-Cutter product reads the entire LISTCAT, determines the changes that are required to each delete/define parm, and automates the generation of the revised parms into a parm library. This automated approach will allow the implementation of 1,000 to 50,000 VSAM tuning adjustments at one time, in one execution of V-Cutter. Since the process is automated and not manual, high quality and high speed are achieved. Implementation into test and production environments can occur with the execution of a copy job which backs up
and replaces the old parm with the revised parm member.
For further information please contact us by using the contact tab at the top of this page.
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Tuning Options
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