Download Maintaining database and application uptime while improving performance and lowering... an important challenge for DBAs and IT organizations. In this... (Intro – Title Page)

(Intro – Title Page)
Maintaining database and application uptime while improving performance and lowering costs is
an important challenge for DBAs and IT organizations. In this demo, we will learn how an IT
team at a fictional company, the Sample Outdoor Company, can optimize their data availability
and resource utilization with InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager.
(Current IT & Business Challenges that lead to the need of IOCM)
When applications go down, so does revenue. Not only are business transactions cancelled or
delayed, but customers can become dissatisfied and take their business elsewhere. But for IT
personnel, maintaining application and system uptime with optimal performance and efficient
resource utilization can be costly, complex, tedious, and challenging. Any database, system, or
application upgrade must be carried out with minimal downtime to avoid impacting users and
applications.
IBM InfoSphere Optim Configuration manager can help organizations meet the challenges of
system, database, and application availability and resource utilization.
(Overview of OCM)
InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager can help you perform the following tasks:
-
(Explore servers, subsystems, databases, and more)
Explore DB2 information for databases and clients that are registered with InfoSphere
Optim Configuration Manager. For example, you can explore the versions of the
databases, the properties of the servers that host the databases such as data sharing
groups, subsystems, and information about the client on which a particular application
runs.
-
(Track changes to the database client configuration)
View all modifications that are made to database client configurations and explore the
change history. Analyzing system changes might help you find the root cause of
performance degradation.
-
(Isolate problematic or new application)
1
Quickly isolate problematic or new applications to a specific DB2 for z/OS data sharing
member, thereby preventing other applications from being affected.
-
(Redirect database connections)
Redirect a database connection to a different DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows
database or to a different DB2 for z/OS subsystem. This can be useful when migrating to
a new server or when a server is down.
-
(Enforce Workload Management)
Force application client transactions to comply with the appropriate workload
management classification rules that are defined in DB2 for z/OS Workload Manager to
meet Service Level Agreements.
-
(Tune Workload Balancing properties)
Improve the efficiency of driver connection pooling by updating the workload balancing
properties of the client drivers for DB2 for z/OS and DB2 pureScale.
-
(Centralize management of client applications and databases)
Provide DBAs with a central web-based graphical user interface and repository to
efficiently manage client applications and databases.
<Transition to next slide>
Let’s see how InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager helps the IT team overcome some
availability and resource utilization challenges.
(Isolating application)
In the first scenario, the Sample Outdoor Company has several production applications running
on a DB2 for z/OS subsystem. The IT team wants to create a separate environment in which a
potentially problematic application can be quickly isolated for analysis and to prevent it from
impacting other applications that share the same resources.
Shelly, the DBA, can set up a DB2 for z/OS subsystem with multiple members of a data sharing
group. One or more data sharing members can be used as a “penalty box” for problematic
applications that negatively affect the performance of other applications. In this scenario,
2
member DB2S is used as the penalty box. When the application is isolated in the penalty box, it
can use only the resources shared by the penalty box members. The penalty box insulates the
excessive resource consumption of the problematic application and prevents it from affecting the
performance of all the other applications.
In this scenario Shelly faces the following challenges:
1. It is difficult to isolate an application or parts of an application as required while not affecting
other applications that are performing well. Moving connections and transactions between data
sharing members often causes application outages.
2. Changing locations is a manual, cumbersome and error-prone process that requires
coordination of different roles across enterprise, including application or system programmers,
DBAs, and system administrators.
Fortunately, Shelly has InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager, and can use the product to
easily isolate one or more applications or even a part of an application because the isolation
happens at the transaction level.
(New slide)
On a particular day, a client rep complains that the Periodic order processing application has
consistent performance problems. Shelly is called to investigate.
(Transition to video clip)
Shelly logs on to the production system environment to monitor the performance of the Periodic
order processing application. Shelly uses IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON for DB2 Performance
Expert on z/OS to analyze the SQL Activity Report. Based on the user ID running the
application, she can see the elapsed time and CPU time for the application workload and
information about the database where the application is running, such as the database location,
group, member and subsystem. She can also see information about the workstation where the
application is invoked and the name of the application. Shelly decides to use InfoSphere Optim
3
Configuration Manager to isolate this application for further analysis and to keep it from
affecting the performance of other applications.
From InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager, Shelly launches the Isolate Application
Transactions task. She selects the predefined database connection on which the problematic
application runs. She enters the application name as a rule condition to identify the application.
The rule condition is added to the existing rule conditions, which are automatically created from
the selected database connection such as server name, port number, and the database location
name.
Next, Shelly enters the port number and the database location alias of the penalty box to which
the application will be isolated. The location alias is in the same data sharing group as the
selected database on which the application runs.
Next, Shelly enables the new rule. The rule takes effect immediately, and the next transaction is
routed to the penalty box.
(Transition)
Later Shelly reads the OMEGAMON’s SQL Activity Trace Report and confirms that the
application is running in the penalty box. She is satisfied that by using InfoSphere Optim
Configuration Manager she can easily isolate the application without causing a system outage.
(Transition to slide)
After the application is analyzed and tuned to acceptable levels of performance, Shelly can easily
switch the application transactions back to the common data sharing members by disabling or
deleting the rule that isolated the transaction.
(Transition to slide - Proving Grounds Scenario)
This application isolation scenario also applies to a situation when a new application is added to
the system or when an existing application is changed significantly. The new application can be
isolated from the existing, well-tuned production applications into a “proving grounds”, which is
4
a subset of one or more members of the data sharing group where Shelly can test the new
application. When the new application can demonstrate stable resource consumption and
performance, Shelly can switch it to the common data sharing members.
(Client Redirect Scenario)
In the following scenario, Shelley must redirect the data flow from one database or subsystem to
another one with minimal application downtime or disruptions. Such redirects can be performed,
for example, when migrating the server from one version to another, when performing a manual
switch over to a higher capacity server, or when one of the servers is down.
In this example, Shelly wants to redirect from a subsystem running on DB2 for z/OS Version 9
to a subsystem on DB2 for z/OS Version 10 with replicated data. She faces the following
challenges:
1. The process of manually changing database location connection properties of each client that
is to be redirected is error prone.
2. Changes to the database location connection properties are not dynamically effective, and such
changes require coordination between many roles across the enterprise.
By using InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager, Shelly can easily redirect the database
connection of one or more applications.
Let’s see how Shelly sets up the redirect process.
(Transition to video clip)
From the database tab, which lists the predefined database connections, Shelly can see the DB2
version 9 data server to which the current application is connected and the new DB2 version 10
data server to which the application will be redirected.
5
Next, from the Database Clients and Servers tab, Shelly opens the Managed Clients view to see
which application clients have accessed the version 9 data server. To determine which of the
applications need to be redirected, Shelly looks for the database location name of the version 9
database. In this example, Shelly wants to redirect one application client at a time. She makes a
note of the IP addresses that access the version 9 server.
Now, Shelly launches the Redirect Database Connections task. She selects the database
connection for the version 9 data server.
Then, she uses the application client IP address as a rule condition for the migration. If desired,
she can specify the datasource as the condition to migrate all the application clients at once. In
the rule, she specifies the client IP address that she noted earlier in the Managed Clients tab.
This condition is added to the others that are automatically created for the server name, port
number and the database location name.
Now, she specifies the version 10 data server to which the client will be redirected. Finally, she
enables this new client rule for the redirect.
Shelly uses the OMEGAMON’s Thread Activity to confirm that the application client is
redirected to the new data server.
Shelly is delighted that InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager has migrated the client so
quickly and efficiently.
(Transition to slide - WLB Control Scenario)
Now, Shelly needs to set up and tune workload balancing for database application clients that run
on a DB2 for z/OS subsystem. She wants to quickly tune the control properties for resource
utilization. This can be achieved by either
Reducing the resource consumptions of one application so that it doesn’t negatively
impact others, or
6
By maximizing throughput by ensuring efficient and effective utilization of the database
connection pools on the client.
In this example, the performance of Application A is problematic because the application spends
too much time waiting for database connections and often reaches the timeout limits. Because
the database connections have not reached the system limit and the system is not fully utilized,
Shelly wants to increase the number of connections for Application A from 2 to 3, which will
help improve its performance.
She faces the following challenges:
1. It is difficult to access each client and manually modify the driver properties to change the
connection pool performance. All the drivers that are deployed in an application server are in the
domain of the application server administrator, which means that Shelly needs to negotiate each
driver configuration change with the application server administrator.
2. It is difficult to know which driver properties control the connection pool performance, and
the best way to adjust the properties to achieve the optimal performance for the workload
demands.
By using the graphical user interface of InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager, Shelly can
easily increase the number of connections from 2 to 3 for the application A client.
(Summary of OCM benefits and value propositions)
InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager provides you with the necessary tools to improve
system availability, optimize resource utilization, and increase productivity.
A DBA can use InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager to:
•
Minimize application outages by routing data clients within data sharing groups or across
data servers and by isolating problematic or new applications
7
•
Maximize utilization of resources by efficiently enforcing database client application
properties to conform to established policies for workload management service classes
and maximize workload balancing
•
Optimize productivity by
o Centralizing management of client applications and databases by controlling their
properties from a web-based graphical user interface
o Quickly identifying potential root causes of performance degradation that result
from database and client configuration changes
IBM InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager helps DBAs cut time and production costs, meet
service-level agreements and, ultimately, secure customer satisfaction.
(Resources slide)
For more information about IBM InfoSphere Optim Configuration Manager and the related
offerings, visit us on the web at the links shown here.
8