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Unlock the full potential of mainframe analytics with Zetaly Data Platform
How to collect mainframe logs as they are written, at a low cost to the mainframe, and turn them into data your teams can use.
Mainframe SMF records hold a lot of value for the business, but many teams struggle to collect them efficiently and at a reasonable cost. The mainframe writes millions of records each day. Teams often review them in spreadsheets, line by line. When the data is finally compiled, it no longer reflects what is happening on the machine.
A standard SCRT report (IBM's Sub-Capacity Reporting Tool) often lacks the detail a team needs, for example activity by workload before an application update. This whitepaper explains how Zetaly Data Platform (ZDP) collects the data continuously, with a small footprint on the mainframe, and how the data reaches your teams.
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What the whitepaper covers
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The three collection problems that hold mainframe teams back: finding the relevant data, getting specific data, and getting data that is up to date.
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How ZDP collects SMF records, system logs, DCOLLECT data, and IMS logs continuously and in near real time, instead of in batches.
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How ZDP keeps collection at about 0.2 percent of mainframe resources.
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Why your choice of MAN data sets or log streams for SMF data does not affect collection.
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How to select the logs you collect, and how the discard option collects SMF records without storing them in the SMF repositories.
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How the collected data feeds dashboards that show patterns and performance bottlenecks.
Built for the people who work with mainframe data
Need performance and capacity indicators without compiling SMF records by hand
Collect SMF records in batch today and want the data as soon as it is written.
Preparing an application update who need activity data down to the workload level
Why should I read this whitepaper?
This whitepaper describes Zetaly Data Platform, Zetaly's own product. It explains what ZDP collects, how it collects the data, and how much of the mainframe's resources the collection uses. Read it if you are comparing ways to collect SMF data, or if your team still compiles SMF records in spreadsheets.
Questions people ask before downloading
What data does Zetaly Data Platform collect?
Zetaly Data Platform (ZDP) collects SMF records, system logs, DCOLLECT data and IMS logs from the mainframe. It captures them continuously and in near real time, not in batches. Each team selects the logs it needs in the application, so ZDP collects only the data the business uses.
Does collecting SMF data with ZDP slow down the mainframe?
ZDP keeps the collection footprint low. The whitepaper puts its resource use at about 0.2 percent of the mainframe. At a large bank in Brazil that collects about 30,000 records per second, ZDP collection uses about 0.2 percent of general-purpose processor capacity.
Does ZDP work with SMF log streams?
Yes. ZDP works the same way whether your site writes SMF data to MAN data sets or to log streams. Its collection works from an SMF exit, which acts on the flow of records and not on their storage. Your team keeps its own choice of SMF storage.
What happens to the data after collection?
ZDP decodes each record and stores the data in a database, with one table per kind of data. Teams then explore the data, or build dashboards in Zetaly Service Intelligence (ZSI) to find patterns and performance bottlenecks. Building dashboards still takes knowledge of your mainframe and your business.