Re: SYSTEM TUNING

Debbie,

In a message dated 10/27/99 12:51:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
DHelms@Lance.com writes:

> Tell me are there any real expert system tuners out there?  Can a system be
>  tuned in a day at the very most a week?   I need some system tuning
>  information where is the best place?

Ooooooh, you're probably starting a religious discussion here, so let me 
start with _my_ doctrine <G>!  They're out there but, apparently, none of 
them work for IBM anymore.  Unless the IBM representative was John Sears or 
Frank Soltis himself walking through my door to tune the system, I'd be hard 
pressed not to toss them out on their ear then and there -- especially if 
they have no gray hairs.

One of my current clients is running a _HUGE_ 640 that was tuned by IBM -- it 
runs like molasses flowing uphill.  In January.  In Alaska. In Point Bering, 
Alaska.  Like molasses running uphill in Point Bering, Alaska in January on a 
particularly cold day.  Like...well, you get the picture and it's not a 
pretty one.  There is _ABSOLUTELY NO REASON_ that QPFRADJ should be set on 
for this machine, but it is at the insistence of the IBM "expert".  Automatic 
performance adjustment practically shuts down the machine throughout the day 
to move memory into pools that only need it for about five minutes.  A person 
that would be happy to wait for their job to finish causes all of those that 
aren't to call the help desk.  The only reason that I haven't insisted on 
spending some time tuning the machine that it will soon be replaced.  The 
only reason that I'm not insisting that they belay the replacement is that 
the new machine will run two locations that now have their own individual 
AS/400's and it's part of their IT strategy in order to consolidate 
production machines and hot sites.

To answer your question, yes.  A system can be tuned to be better in a day.  
A week would be more effective than a day (preferably during month end), but 
wouldn't require all day every day for a week if you have performance tools 
installed and a collection running frequently for that time (which in and of 
itself will degrade performance).  Your best bet is to read _and understand_ 
the "Work Management Guide" if you want to do it yourself.  Grasp how to 
gauge your workload, storage pools (both fixed and shared), DASD performance, 
and "whatever else ails you", and you might not need to pay some idiot high 
rates to tell you that your system is "performing to spec".  Know your 
workload, know the "Work Management Guide", and _NO_ consulting dollars will 
be spent on performance tuning...

Which raises a question for me personally that must have something to do with 
RISC processors but I've never encountered on another RISC.  What would cause 
commands that work with jobs to perform _very_ slowly?  WRKACTJOB isn't bad, 
nor is WRKUSRJOB, but WRKSBMJOB and WRKSBSJOB can take five minutes to come 
up.  What's up with that?

JMHO,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"The only stupid question is the one you were too proud to ask." -- Me
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