It's mid-September, which means Fall, and football of course, are well underway.  This time of year always excites us.  No, not just because of our belief that this is finally THE year for the Dallas Cowboys to take it all (which it is, rest assured) but also because we see it as an opportunity to really learn from the VSE community for this year. 

What are the concerns, needs and even hopes for the your VSE system and overall business?  What has and hasn't worked this year and what are your objectives for the next?  These questions excite us! It stirs up conversation and collaboration and that is what business is truly all about.

So as the season continues to change, we hope everyone takes an opportunity to reflect on how we can further evolve the VSE marketplace and community to be sure we are always still leading the way in emerging technologies. Please send us an email, or even leave a comment or a suggestion to the entire community on VSEwiki.com.  Action is the name of the game and this is your opportunity to make your hopes and concerns known.

We hope you enjoy this week's iTip!

FINALLY, GO BACK IN TIME (and without buying a Delorean)!

There really is an easy way to go back in time....minus the plutonium.

With z/IPMon^®, the only full function performance and problem manager for your critical VSE TCP/IP systems, you can finally look back and replay your past TCP/IP activity with the exclusive Retrospect™ feature.  You simply change the date and time fields in z/IPMon to previous point in time and z/IPMon will reload and display the data as it occurred.  So when your boss wants to know what happened, you can go back in time and tell him - without buying a Delorean!

Now with Response Time Reporting!

And now you can be the first to know that z/IPMon is now reporting on response time, either by application or by host. This useful information immediately shows any degradation in your users' interaction with the system to help you spot a performance problem. You can even go back in time with the Retrospect feature and watch the response time as it happened in the past. Come See What You've Been Missing!

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Understanding Your TCP/IP System - A White Paper

This Week's iTip!

CICS CSD (DFHCSD) Considerations

With the changes to resource definition in CICS Transaction Server (CICS TS) the CICS System Definition (CSD) file (DFHCSD) has become a very important system file which needs to be backup up regularly and easily recoverable in the event it becomes unusable. 

The CICS CSD is a VSAM KSDS file that is used to store CICS resource definitions, groupings of definitions and startup lists used during cold start of CICS.  The CICS CSD is a mandatory system file for CICS TS because resource definitions which were previously supported with the PCT, PPT and TCT macro tables on CICS/VSE are now only supported in the CSD file on CICS TS. 

The CICS CSD file is installed in the VSESPUC user catalog during initial installation of VSE.  On a new install of VSE it is recommended to make a copy of this file.  This will provide a fallback in case the original file is used for definitions and becomes corrupted. 

A VSAM IDCAMS job can be used to define a backup CSD file and repro the original one into it or to backup the original to tape.  The CSD can be backed up to tape separately or by taking a backup of the VSESPUC user catalog containing it. 

The CSD file can be shared between multiple CICS partitions or a separate copy of the CSD can created for each partition.  The latter will result in more maintenance work for the system programmer because updates to IBM definitions in the system default CSD file will need to be propagated to CSD files that have been copied from it.  The FSU process from one level of VSE to another will perform updates to the CSD which will also need to be applied to other copies of the CSD.  The FSU jobstep that updates the primary CSD can be used to update the other CSDs or simply copy the updated IBM groups from the primary CSD to the copied CSDs using the DFHCSDUP batch utility.

If your jobstream editing and submittal functions are done using editors running under CICS then it becomes critical that recovery procedures are in place to access a good CSD file if the one being used becomes corrupted and the CICS containing your editing functions cannot be started.  If the CSD file used by this CICS is defined in standard labels, then a simple approach is to have a known good backup of a CSD file in a VSAM catalog on the system.  A standard label delete and add can be done from a PAUSE job to change the DFHCSD label to this backup file in order to restart the CICS partition and to submit CSD recovery jobs.

Another recovery approach is to keep a VSAM restore job in the POWER reader queue to restore the last good backup copy of the CSD file from a backup tape.  A recovery CICS jobstream with JCL referencing a backup CSD file could also be kept in the POWER reader to bring up a CICS with the necessary editor functions to recovery the failed CSD file.  With the importance of the CSD file, implementation of one of these recovery techniques is critical to the operation of the CICS environment.     

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• Costs are Capped - We will scope your migration project to take everything into account, and provide a proposal with a fixed fee. This means we will accomplish the migration regardless of the number of hours required, guaranteed!
• Proven Methodology - illustro's iMove^TM  Project Method for Migrations embodies 2 decades of experience to ensure nothing is forgotten and the process is streamlined.
• Entire Project or Assistance - Some of our customers just don't have any time out from their busy day-to-day to focus on a migration project, and ask for us to do the entire project. Others just want some assistance to ensure best practices are used and to ensure success. 
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