Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

Solution400 International, the Oceanside, California, developer of systems management software for the iSeries, recently updated its disk use analysis and cleanup tool, S4i DASD-Plus, with new features and functionality designed to help companies manage disk usage related to the OS/400's Integrated File System. With DASD-Plus V6R9, the company's first new release of the product in a year and a half, users can more effectively monitor and reclaim disk space allotted to files on the IFS.

DASD-Plus is designed to help manage disk storage space on OS/400 systems. With DASD-Plus, users gain access to 25 different routines that can be set up to run automatically, allowing operators and administrators to concentrate on more pressing matters. These routines span a range of standard housekeeping tasks, such as clearing history logs, compression, and resizing libraries, job queues, and objects on the fly.

DASD-Plus features four major components: the Job Execution Manager, the Analyze Disk Space, the Save Disk Space, and the Remote Control groups of functions. The Job Execution Manager functions allow users to setup and run DASD-Plus tasks as a complete job stream, without having to create CL programs. The Analyze Disk Space component lets users run a variety of reports on their DASD usage, while Save Disk Space, not surprisingly, provides routines that let users reclaim their valuable disk. Users can run these last two groups of tasks interactively if they don't wish to automate them using the Job Execution Manager. Remote Control lets users set up and execute Job Execution Manager tasks on one or more remote OS/400 servers.

The Analyze Disk Space group of functions allows you to analyze disk space utilization and run a variety of reports and queries using the data. These functions include the Survey Disk Space functions that build a database of information about your DASD utilization, and the Analyze Disk Space Reports that are used to create custom reports. The Analyze Disk Space group also includes History-Based Trend Reports, which lets users predict future DASD needs based on historical trends, and Variance Reports, which lets a user see if and when an object has been modified.

The Save Disk Space is the meat of the DASD-Plus utility. After analyzing your disk usage and figuring out which files you can safely move, delete, or compress, this is where you finally get your disk space back. Functions included in this group of tasks include Reclaim Disk Space, which allows users to remove a variety of files, including spool files, job and message queues, history logs, journal receivers, alerts, Microsoft Office documents, calendar items, e-mails, PTFs, and other types of files. Solution400 has built a nifty feature into Reclaim Disk Space that lets you run the tasks in "what if" mode. The second group of Save Disk Space, Compress and Expand, lets you compress a variety of file types based on your rules.

With DASD-Plus V6R9, Solution 400 has expanded the utility with the capability to survey and cleanup the IFS, which is important because many new OS/400 workloads, such as WebSphere, are using the IFS instead of the native database. With this release, the company says, DASD-Plus will automatically analyze the IFS and create trend reports that allow users to see and sort the IFS objects. Once armed with this report, users can employ the reclamation features of DASD-Plus to clean up the IFS and restore DASD.

DASD-Plus V6R9 works with all versions of OS/400 from V4R4 to V5R2. Pricing for the product is tier-based and ranges from $3,995 for the P05 group to $14,995 for the P60 group. The first year of maintenance for this product costs about 7.5 percent of the license fee. For more information, go to Solution400 International's Web site, at www.solution400.com.

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