When Was the Last Time You Looked at Titan?

Do you have an image of mainframes — if you think of mainframes at all — as outdated platforms long fallen out of use? Well, it’s time to adjust your image and take another look because today’s mainframe is not your father’s (or mother’s) mainframe. In an IT environment of tight budgets, heightened security demands, rising volume, and high energy prices, the new mainframe, aka zServer, is proving its true value. Today’s demanding IT requirements make the reliability, cost-effectiveness, security, and scalability of zServer platforms like CIT’s Titan an extremely attractive option for data centers and their customers.

So, take another look at the CIT services available on Titan and find out what makes the zServer one of the most durable and adaptive platforms available.

I. Virtualization

Virtualization has become a really big thing nowadays as data centers struggle with finding space, power, and cooling to deal with more and more servers. Things tend to come full circle — the first and arguably the most robust computer virtualization was accomplished on mainframes many years ago. Through virtualization, customers can save money by reducing hardware purchases.

Titan currently supports two distinct operating systems through z9-Series virtualization technology. The first operating system, z/OS, supports the traditional Titan zServer environment. A second operating system, z/VM, can manage multiple virtual Linux servers on the same z9-Series server. Linux virtual servers can be implemented in a day and can simplify networking requirements and reduce power consumption, resulting in lower costs to our customers.

At a time when customers and data centers are looking for ways to cut energy costs, new applications for the z9-Series server, including using the LAMP application development stack for web and database servers, offer both electrical power savings and the highest level of service. Currently, CIT is implementing a pilot Linux product offering for our customers on the z9-Series enterprise server. This includes a memory upgrade on the z9-Series server to support Linux virtual systems and production implementation of the z/VM operating system and Red Hat Linux.

II. Security administration

Security remains a major concern of any computing platform, and here zServer platforms have a lot to offer. On the Titan system, Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) provides access control and auditing functionality. Not only is RACF known as one of the most mature and scalable security monitors in computing, it also has some interesting features not often found in Windows or Unix environments. It can, for example, set permissions for file patterns — that is, set the permissions even for files that do not yet exist. Those permissions are then used for a file (or other object) created at a later time. In other words, RACF establishes security policies rather than just permission records.

RACF has continuously evolved to support such modern security features as digital certificates/public key infrastructure and LDAP interfaces. The underlying z9-Series hardware works closely with RACF. For example, digital certificates are protected within tamper-proof cryptographic processors. Major zServer subsystems, especially DB2 Version 8, use RACF to provide multilevel security (MLS). Some other responsibilities in the RACF area include defining users and passwords, authorizing access privileges to data and other resources to users and groups, performing surveillance reporting, implementing exits, and responding to SAS70 audits.

III. Automated job scheduling

A real benefit of zServer computing is the ability to run batch jobs — that is to set one program or a series of programs (“jobs”) to run without user intervention, often at idle times when the machine is least busy. This is particularly good for large applications because it allows efficient sharing of resources. A wide assortment of batch applications, including DB2, File Utilities, Batch TSO (REXX) applications, and SAS programs, are executed in the batch environment.

Titan supports several tools to allow automated batch job submission to the z/OS Titan system.

• CA-7 is a Titan-hosted workload automation product designed to automate critical workloads and IT processes. It supports job submission scheduling, as well as job submission and event triggers on Titan. CA-7 features event-based automation and management, workflow monitoring, enterprise-wide visualization and administration, dynamic critical path management and workload prioritization, embedded workflow, and enterprise reporting.

Customer interface:

• Web Submit: This tool allows customers to submit jobs to z/OS Titan for job streams with few dependencies and fairly straightforward scheduling requirements. Just fill out a simple scheduling form at http://silk.nih.gov/job/scheduler to specify the JCL and time requirements for the job you wish to submit.


• Workload Control Center (WCC): For customers with more sophisticated job scheduling requirements, WCC's web-based interface provides secure end-to-end visualization, administration, and monitoring of job processing across multiple platforms (such as z/OS and Linux) via a consolidated, web-based console. Using leading-edge portal technology, WCC accesses CA-7 on Titan to schedule job streams on Titan and monitor their execution. CIT's Automation Support Group will be more than happy to work with you to implement job processing requirements with either Workload Control Center or CA-7.

IV. Database services

A 2007 Gartner study of information management trends found a marked shift to Linux and z/OS as cost-effective, modern database management system (DBMS) platforms. A closer look at some of the Database Management Systems on Titan, such as DB2 and IMS, should make clear why zServer DBMS are becoming so popular.

DB2

Its reliability and capability in supporting mission-critical business operations make DB2 for z/OS an excellent tool for large-scale data management. Due to its special environment and the demanding needs of its customers, DB2 for z/OS already offers exclusive features like Multi-Level Security (MLS), extremely large table sizes, and hardware-assisted compression. In addition, DB2 is now starting to acquire Business Intelligence features such as Materialized Query Tables (MQTs) and star schema. While DB2 has always been known for its leading performance and capabilities, DB2 Release 8 now brings it even closer into alignment with other relational database systems.

DB2 Audio-Image-Video (AIV) extenders are a technology currently being investigated as a CIT service offering. These extenders enable users to take database applications beyond traditional numeric and character data to images, video, audio, and complex documents. Stay tuned for classes and articles on how to take advantage of this technology.

IMS

Information Management System (IMS) is a database and transaction management system that was first introduced at NIH to support the old NIH Business System — ADB (which is still in use on Titan until all functions are transferred to the new NIH Business System). Since its introduction, IMS has gone through many changes in adapting to new programming tools and environments.

IMS has two major components, the IMS Database Management System (IMS DB) and the IMS Transaction Management System (IMS TM).

IMS DB:

• Organizes data into a hierarchy — data in each level is dependent on the data in the next higher level;


• Arranges data to ensure integrity and optimize storage and retrieval.

IMS TM:

• Controls I/O (input/output) processing;


• Provides formatting, logging, and recovery of messages;


• Maintains communications security;


• Oversees the scheduling and execution of programs.

IMS has come far from the days when its only programming interface was PL/1. Today, IMS applications and databases can be connected to CICS applications and DB2 databases. Java programs can access IMS databases and services.

V. Web services

Did you know that data stored on Titan can be easily made available on the web? You can get high-performance web access to DB2 and other Titan data using software called Shadow Web Server. Shadow Web Server's architecture provides very tight integration into the Titan environment with regard to scalability, security, control, and the protection of zServer assets from risk. Shadow’s interface with RACF and use of the "controlled transaction paradigm" allows client-side access to zServer resources while ensuring minimal risk.

Some of the CIT applications that use Shadow Web include Web Sponsor, Chargeback reports, DB2 SQL generator, and RACF administration. Many customers have integrated the Shadow Web services into their applications. Shadow transactions are written in the REXX programming language, a free general-purpose scripting language famous for combining ease of use with power and offering thousands of free add-on tools.

VI. Printing

Even in a paperless office, sooner or later, everybody has to print something. Titan provides both central and remote print services with a variety of features suited for many different printing needs.

Central Printing:

• Infoprint Server: This Titan feature allows customers to stop tying up their local office printers and print resources (paper and ink) with large print jobs. Instead, simply use Infoprint to send your large print workload from any NIHnet server (i.e. your desktop PC) onto a central Titan print server where we will print, collate, and hole-punch it for you.


• Print Services Facility (PSF): PSF is a Titan-based offering for driving Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) on the NIH Data Center's Continuous Form and Cut Sheet Printers. PSF provides a wide variety of data formatting capabilities, including application independent page layouts, formatting of tagged print records, and XML data formatting. Titan PSF helps ensure that your output is printed accurately and completely, without missing or duplicate pages.

Remote Printing:

• VPS is the opposite of Infoprint. It enables you to print any Titan print output generated from such applications as the ADB, DB2, TSO/ISPF, and batch job processing on any printer accessible through NIHnet, such as printers in your local office area.

VII. Data administration

One of the biggest advantages of our zServer platform is that data on Titan is very secure. Titan automatically backs up all changed data nightly and keeps the last 5 copies of a specific data set version. Titan also performs automatic space-availability and data-availability management between online disk storage, virtual tape storage, and robotic tape devices such as the SL8500. Its operations occur daily at a specified time and allow for keeping a data set for a predetermined period before deleting or moving it. If you accidentally delete your data you can easily recover it yourself with some of the best recovery tools available on the market. In addition to individual data file backups, volume backups are kept both in the Data Center and off-site.

VIII. Editors and tools

The preferred way to perform work on Titan is Time Sharing Option/Interactive System Productivity Facility (TSO/ISPF). This system has an editor and tools to allow users to create, store, print, and delete data sets and to submit and examine jobs.

TSO/ISPF is an environment that allows multiple users to access Titan services at the same time. Customers use these facilities to submit jobs and store data sets via the computer's operating system. TSO allows you to execute some programs like SAS and DB2 SQL interactively, while ISPF presents a series of menus from which you may pick the tools you want to use.

We are here for you…

NIH’s Titan system draws on decades of innovation and collaboration with our important customers, whose needs in running complex business operations continually shape innovation on our zServer platform. We suggest you look at Titan to reduce cost and complexity and improve security and reliability for your applications.

A Titan z9-Series computer has the equivalent capacity of nearly 150 x86 servers with an 85% smaller footprint and up to 85% lower energy costs. The zServer is a hotbed for business applications — the industry has seen over 600 new applications developed for z9-Series computers in 2007 alone — with momentum in both traditional as well as Linux, Java, and DB2 business intelligence applications.

We are eager to help you and look forward to your feedback and your concerns about Titan — what we do well, what we could do better, and how to better meet your IT requirements. If you have any questions about using this technology, we want to hear from you!

Please visit the NIH Help Desk website or call 301-496-4357, 301-496-8294 (TTY), or toll free at 866-319-4357 to arrange for a Titan consultant to contact you.

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