Sampling Techdocs - January/March 2011

It's been a while since I've referred to some of the most interesting publications I regularly find on Techdocs. But, here we are once again with a selection.

• FAQ : What are the maximum distances for various FC speeds and cable media?
  Did you know that in the worst case with 8Gbps and 50 µm short-wave cables you can hardly bridge 50m. With 16 Gbps that becomes 35m.
  
  
• Technical document : Identifying the dynamic SQL statement which is causing a lock timeout in DB2 for z/OS
  I mentioned this document before but apparantly it's been updated. At the time it was set up for DB2 V8. It has been updated and it's also valid for newer releases.
  
  
• Presentations : Introduction to ProtecTIER. Concepts of Data Deduplication and Introduction to ProtecTIER - TS7600 Architecture
  If you're revising your backup solutions and you're interested in D2D or D2D2T and you want state of the art deduplication, then you might want to take a look at these two presentations. They give a good overview of ProtecTIER, quite technical at times and there's also a roadmap included.
  

• Presentation : DS8000 PAV and FlashCopy with z/VSE
  There's more to life than just z/OS. Here's a nice presentation on the implementation of PAV on z/VSE. It explains PAV in general and then continues on how to implement it on z/VSE. Do take a good look at the restrictions, though.
  

• Presentation : DS8000 Advanced Functions and z/VM
  "This presentation discusses which DS8000 System z functions are exploited by z/VM. Functions discussed are Parallel Access Volumes (PAVs), FlashCopy, MIDAWs, zHPF, and Extended Address Volumes (EAVs)." Also interesting if you're running e.g. z/VSE as a guest on z/VM.
  

• Flash : IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension Top of Rack Switch (TOR)
  This document starts with an overview of the zBX but goes into greater detail afterwards. It discusses the Bulk Power Heads on the z196, the connectivity for the Intranode Management Network (INMN) and the IntraEnsemble Data Network (IEDN), with some illustrations (always nice to get a visual) and it concludes with lots of reference materials.

Well that's it for now. As I always say : just check them out !