Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

Help/Systems, an iSeries systems management specialist, is shipping a new version of its utility that automatically tunes iSeries memory use according to ever-changing and up-to-the-minute conditions. With Robot/AUTOTUNE Version 7.0, the Minnetonka, Minnesota, company has added collaboration between Robot/AUTOTUNE and Robot/LPAR, a relatively new Help/Systems product that is similar in some respect to Robot/AUTOTUNE, except that it's designed to automatically manage resources in logical partitioning (LPAR) environments.

If you've seen any of IBM's "On Demand" marketing lately, you might have thought they were talking about the iSeries. While the iSeries isn't likely to be featured prominently by IBM in advertisements anytime soon, it doesn't change the fact that the OS/400 server has numerous advanced "On Demand"-like facilities that make the iSeries highly adaptable to changing workloads. By changing certain settings--such as those managing memory pools, subsystems, job queue priorities, and LPAR configurations--a single iSeries server can be adapted to efficiently run a multitude of workload types at once.

The trouble is, these types of advanced capabilities can be complex to set up. With all these different modes of looking at workloads and assigning priorities, it can be a complicated undertaking to manually configure an iSeries server to keep diverse workloads running in the most efficient manner. That's why Help/Systems developed Robot/AUTOTUNE: to automate tuning an OS/400 server.

Robot/AUTOTUNE works by allocating memory. On a regular interval, such as every five to 15 seconds, the product takes a snapshot of five important performance variables--memory allocation, CPU utilization, disk space consumption, transactions per minute, and response time--and simultaneously adjusts the memory pools accordingly, to achieve the most efficient result from the mix. The product works by finding the optimum amount of memory based on workload demands and four user-defined variables, including minimum and maximum memory pool sizes, how much memory to move when an adjustment is needed, and a pool size performance factor that determines job priority.

In addition to moving memory, Robot/AUTOTUNE has several other tricks up its digital sleeve, such as managing all batch jobs by isolating them in their own temporary private pool, which Help/Systems calls "dynamic pools"; managing low-priority jobs by placing their queues in a rotating group; the capability to manage interactive jobs when they hit a certain threshold; and tuning IBM Lotus Domino servers running in multiple subsystems. The software also generates graphical reports on a PC for up to 25 networked OS/400 servers, and connects to other products in the Help/Systems Robot suite.

The growing trend toward server consolidation in 2001 and 2002 suddenly made OS/400's LPAR capabilities an extremely valuable asset to IBM. While the iSeries had fairly advanced job-management before LPAR debuted with OS/400 V4R4, the "server within a server" capabilities that LPAR brought have escalated the iSeries job-management powers to new heights. It also brought with it new automation requirements from companies that don't want to employ an operator to babysit the LPAR environment all day and all night.

While Robot/AUTOTUNE would manage any job, whether it was running in a logical partition or on a non-LPAR machine, Help/Systems needed a way to fine-tune the LPAR environment to a higher degree. In late 2002, Help/Systems launched Robot/LPAR (see "Help/Systems Brings Automation to Logical Partitioning"), which gives administrators greater control over their automated LPAR environment and allows certain thresholds to be assigned for what quantity of interactive processing, total processing, and memory each partition gets.

The primary change that Help/Systems made with Robot/AUTOTUNE 7.0 is to make it more compatible with Robot/LPAR. With the new version, Robot/AUTOTUNE now accommodates dynamic memory changes made by Robot/LPAR, as well as memory shifted between partitions manually. As workloads on an iSeries change and Robot/LPAR moves memory among partitions, Robot/AUTOTUNE accounts for the increased or decreased memory available, and allocates the memory within the partition to the specific subsystems and memory pools that need it, in order to achieve optimum performance.

Help/Systems says it has also streamlined the product setup with Version 7. If the user chooses the automatic setup option, Robot/AUTOTUNE will determine the system's tuning needs based on the active environment. This option works for both "day" and "night" processing environments that Robot/AUTOTUNE supports.

Robot/AUTOTUNE 7.0 is available immediately. For more information, go to www.helpsystems.com.

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