September 29, 2009

Titan Default Printer will be Cut Sheet starting November 15, 2009

As part of greening the NIH Data Center, Titan’s default centralized printing will change from continuous-form paper to cut-sheet paper starting on November 15, 2009. Facing rising energy costs and concerns about sustainability, data centers worldwide are looking for ways to reduce the consumption of power and natural resources such as fuel, paper, and toner. At 30-40 percent of the operational budget today, energy usage is becoming the NIH Data Center’s largest single operating cost. As pointed out in the Spring 2009 Interface article “Going Green by Increasing Printing Efficiency” (issue 243), the maintenance costs for the 3900 continuous-form printers have been increasing steadily, due to the energy use and need for special equipment associated with these printers.

Benefits of using cut-sheet printing or saving output to viewable media

• Save on printer costs – much cheaper to save reports on disk or as PDF files


• Gain office space that is now used to store printed output


• Reduce the time spent searching for specific data – it's easier to find in media-stored output


• Print only what you need and help NIH achieve its greening goals

We encourage you to consider alternate – and often lower-cost – ways of viewing your Titan output. The Data Center is ready to assist you in identifying the option that best fits your needs. Together we can find alternatives to continuous-form printing that help both the environment and the bottom line.

Changing your JCL to use cut-sheet printers to generate the output

Starting on November 15, 2009, the default printer for centralized output generation will be the cut-sheet printer. No JCL (Job Control Language) changes will be required to generate the output on cut sheet printers as of the November 15th date.

Alternatives to continuous-form printing

There are a number of alternatives to continuous-form printing you can select that are cheaper and greener:

1. Use IOF in TSO/ISPF to save output on disk
2. Use IOF as a batch job to save jobs/reports to a Titan data set
3. Use JCL to route reports directly to a Titan data set
4. Use JCL to fetch job output and email to recipients
5. Use JCL to fetch job output and convert it to a PDF file and email it to user
6. Use a cut-sheet printer to generate the output

Making the switch

The remainder of this article describes how to use each of these greener (and cheaper!) alternatives.

1 - Use IOF in TSO/ISPF to save output on disk – This technique is described in the Interface article, “Going Green by Increasing Printing Efficiency.” To save on your printing costs and reduce the physical space needed for storing and filing printouts, consider using the ISPF Input Output Facility (IOF) to save your job output as disk data sets instead of printing it. You can always print the job from the data set at a later date or edit the data set and then print the output. To avoid printing, you must hold the output using either:

MSGCLASS=H with SYSOUT=*

or

/*ROUTE OUTPUT HOLD

2 - Use IOF as a Batch Job to save output on disk – Instead of using TSO/ISPF, a batch job that executes IOF can be used to save output on disk. Let’s assume a userid, JOEUSER, has several jobs in output hold that could be saved to disk. The example below lists all jobs in the output queue belonging to userid JOEUSER:

------------------------------ IOF Job List Menu -------------( 4 )------------
COMMAND ===>                                                 SCROLL ===> DATA  
--------------------------------- Output Jobs ---------------------------------
-------JOBNAME--JOBID---ACT-STAT-OWNER----DEST/DEVICE-------RECS-HELD-DAY--TIME
_    1 JOB1     J002621        8 JOEUSER  NIHJES2                1664 037  5:01
_    2 JOB2     J002112          JOEUSER  NIHJES2                5342 037   :13
_    3 JOB3     J001918          JOEUSER  NIHJES2                1787 036  5:01
_    4 JOB4     J001440          JOEUSER  NIHJES2                5342 036   :17

On August 22, 2009, JOEUSER wishes to run the IOF batch utility, BATCHTSO, to save JOB4 (job number = J001440) to disk as a dataset named JOEUSER.JOB4.AUG2209. The following JCL would save the job to disk as data set JOEUSER.JOB4.AUG2209:

//SAVE2DSK EXEC BATCHTSO
//OUTPUT DD DSN=JOEUSER.JOB4.AUG2209,DISP=(NEW,CATLG),UNIT=FILE,
// DCB=(LRECL=133,BLKSIZE=0,RECFM=FBA),
// SPACE=(TRK,(10,10),RLSE)
//SYSTSIN DD *
%FETCH J001440


3 - Use JCL to route reports directly to a Titan data set

//STEPNAME EXEC PGM=your program
//outputddname DD DSN=USERID.REPORT.NAME,DISP=(NEW,CATLG),
// UNIT=FILE,DCB=(LRECL=133,BLKSIZE=0,RECFM=FBA),
// SPACE=(TRK,(10,10),RLSE)
//OTHERDD


4 - Use JCL to fetch job output and email to recipients

//STEP1 EXEC BATCHTSO
//OUTPUT DD DSN=USERID.Report.Name,DISP=(NEW,CATLG),
// UNIT=FILE,DCB=(LRECL=133,BLKSIZE=0,RECFM=FBA),
// SPACE=(TRK,(10,10),RLSE)
//SYSTSIN DD *
%FETCH J031951
/*
//STEP2 EXEC SENDMAIL
//SMTPOUT DD SYSOUT=(M,SMTP),FREE=CLOSE
//MAILIN     DD *
FROM: SENDEREMAILADDRESS
TO: RECEIVEREMAILADDRESS
SUBJECT: Your Report Subject


Your email body
//ATTCNTL   DD *
ASCII01; APPLICATION; Your report2.txt
//ASCII01 DD DSN=USERID.Report.Name,DISP=SHR


5 - Use JCL to fetch job output and convert it to a PDF file and email it to users

//STEP1 EXEC BATCHTSO
//OUTPUT DD DSN=USERID.Report.Name,DISP=(NEW,CATLG),
// UNIT=FILE,DCB=(LRECL=133,BLKSIZE=0,RECFM=FBA),
// SPACE=(TRK,(10,10),RLSE)
//SYSTSIN DD *
%FETCH jobnumber
/*
//PDF EXEC PGM=IKJEFT01,DYNAMNBR=100,REGION=0M
//SYSEXEC DD DSN=NIH.CLISTS.VB,DISP=SHR
//SYSTSPRT DD SYSOUT=A
//SYSTSIN DD *
%TXT2PDF 'ORIENT=LANDSCAPE,CC=YES,TITLE=YOUR REPORT‘
//SYSUT1   DD DSN=userid.report.name,DISP=SHR
//SYSUT2   DD DSN=userid.report,name.PDF,DISP=(NEW,CATLG),
//         UNIT=FILE,RECFM=VB,LRECL=256,DSORG=PS,
//         SPACE=(TRK,(5,5),RLSE)
//EMAIL EXEC SENDMAIL
//SMTPOUT DD SYSOUT=(M,SMTP),FREE=CLOSE
//MAILIN   DD *
FROM: Senderemailaddress
TO: Receiveremailaddress
SUBJECT: Your Report Subject


Your email body
//ATTCNTL   DD *
BINARY01; APPLICATION/PDF; yourreportname.PDF(attachment name on your email)
//BINARY01 DD DSN=userid.report.name.PDF, (from Step 2)
//         DISP=SHR


Conclusion

Reducing Titan’s dependence on the 3900 continuous-form printer will help us lower one of our largest single operating costs – energy usage – and bring the NIH Data Center in line with NIH greening goals (http://www.nems.nih.gov) of sustainability and reduced resource consumption. We hope to work with our customers to achieve our goals of becoming more energy efficient and increasing our IT capacity without expanding our energy footprint from what it is today.

If you need help or have any questions regarding Output Distribution, contact the NIH Help Desk at http://ithelpdesk.nih.gov/support or call 301-496-HELP (301-496-4357), 866-319-4357 (toll free), or 301-496-8294 (TTY).