Reader Feedback: Run Collection Services Before You Upgrade

Published: February 4, 2008

Hey, TPM:

Good article and guidance regarding moving to V6R1. [Editor's Note: The reader is referring to Bracing for i5/OS V6R1 and the Winding Down of V5, from the January 14 issue of The Four Hundred.]

If you get the opportunity, remind folks to run the system's Collection Services before moving to capture a set of baseline performance data. Once they move the data, if not needed, it can be erased. If they move and have some performance issues, they have a base to compare to. Otherwise, it's really a challenge for the performance analyst to make good decisions as to what might be causing a problem.

--Rick

Hi, Rick:

Thanks for the tip. Any chance you want to write some performance tuning articles for us for Four Hundred Guru?

--TPM

Not real sure about writing. I've cut back a lot on consulting; one reason being that there's a lot of "new" stuff the last two to three years that I'm just not up to date on at all.

Also, it seems that the articles I've done the last few years in iSeries News have gotten very little, if any, feedback. There seems to be an attitude that more hardware solves all problems, so it's not necessary to understand how to "tune" things.

I'd rather do some advanced training on Job Watcher and PEX analysis, but haven't been successful in convincing others to include some performance sections in the classes they currently teach. Last winter, I did an IBM Redbook on PEX Statistics, which I believe is one of the best tools the AS/400 (and its predecessors and successors) ever had, along with the current iDoctor and Job Watcher combination. But once again, very little feedback either for or against. Sort of like Ron Paul's presidential try.

On the other hand, I still enjoy doing performance analysis, but being a Minnesota golfer, only in the off season.

Thanks, take care.

--Rick

Maybe if the performance tools showed you how much money you didn't have to spend by using them or how many barrels of oil that extra hardware really costs--with the fully burdened environmental and military-industrial-Congressional complex impact added in as well as manufacturing costs and power and cooling costs over a three-year span--people would work a lot harder on tuning software and buy a lot less hardware. Making something a commodity is not necessarily an improvement in the quality of life, is it?

I am not advocating for the days of core memory. I am just saying, scarcity makes people clever and sometimes makes things run more efficiently, not less so.

Thanks again,

--TPM

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Bracing for i5/OS V6R1 and the Winding Down of V5

IBM Previews i5/OS V6R1, Due in 2008

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