OS Solutions Rolls Out New GUI, Reorg While Active in OS Director

by Alex Woodie

It can be difficult for AS/400 and iSeries shops with strict uptime requirements to find an opening big enough to perform file reorganizations. A hospital, for example, may not be able to justify the hours of down time necessary to use OS/400's native file reorganization facility, which requires an exclusive lock. In these types of environments, a reorganize while active tool, such as the one that OS Solutions recently shipped in OS Director 5.0, is a feasible alternative.

OS Director is a collection of six tools for managing and automating a wide range of activities on OS/400 servers, from monitoring and forecasting object and library sizes to scheduling jobs and distributing spool files. OS Solutions started rolling out OSD 5.0 on a limited basis to its existing customers in January 2003, and made it generally available just before the COMMON conference in Indianapolis three weeks ago.

One of the key enhancements expected to bolster OSD's uptake among new customers is the new browser-based GUI that OS Solutions is shipping with the product suite. OS Solutions' development team, located in the United Kingdom, decided to roll out the new GUI in piecemeal fashion in hopes of improving the GUI based on feedback from its users. Today the Web GUI is available for the Object Manager and O&M Manager, its module for monitoring and managing object and DASD usage. The other four modules that make up the ODS suite--Task Manager, Job Tracking, Data Manager, and Advanced Options--are scheduled to receive the GUI in an interim release later this year.

The new GUI adds little functionality beyond what was capable with the green-screen version of the software; the exceptions being colorized graphics and improved navigation for new users who are used to navigating an application with a mouse. Users will need the standard HTTP Server that IBM ships with OS/400 to serve the CGI-based scripts that are read by the browser. There are also cost and performance benefits to using the new browser interface for companies on older iSeries hardware and versions of OS/400 that penalize for using the 5250 data stream. At the same time, OS Solutions was adamant in emphasizing that users can continue to use their green screens with OSD and will not be forced to upgrade to the GUI.

The new Reorganize While Active feature is the biggest functional enhancement in OSD 5.0. OS Solutions added the capability because of its customers' increasing need to keep systems available as much as possible, says Pete Massiello, a partner with OS Solutions at the company's Danbury, Connecticut, office. "Some of our customers start a file reorg on the weekend, and they don't know if it's going to take a few hours or run until Monday or Tuesday," he says. Now the people who don't have the ability to have downtime can do the reorg while active."

OS Solutions' Reorg While Active feature, which is included in the O&M Manager module of the suite, does "intelligent" file reorganizations, Massiello says. That means the OSD software can do things like look at a certain file and estimate how long it will take to run, based on the size of the machine. Then the OSD software decides whether the file reorganization can be completed within the allotted time. If it can't, it will delay the file reorganization until there is a window of time big enough to accommodate it.

All OSD customers on current maintenance will receive the Reorg While Active capability as part of their free upgrade to OSD 5.0. New OSD customers can purchase it as a feature in O&M Manager, which is available as an optional module on top of the core Object Manager, Advanced Options, and foundation layers of OSD.

OS Solutions has made a number of other enhancements to OSD with this release, including support for multistreaming of action jobs, which allows OSD to get more management done in smaller windows on larger, multiprocessor machines. Other enhancements include improvements in spool file management in the Advanced Options module; new views on ASP usage, content, and overflows, in Object Manager; new forecast growth charts, and growth history charts, in Object Manager. All six OSD modules received enhancements in OSD 5.0.

OSD 5.0 is available now. Prices are tier based and start at $2,500, which includes the foundation layers, Object Manager, and Advanced Options modules. Companies in the P05 tier can purchase all six OSD modules for $4,500. For more information, go to www.os-solutions.com.

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