EPV for z/OS Suite of Products

The EPV for z/OS suite of products manages performance and capacity planning in the z/OS environment

Hardware and Software Cost Control
EPV for z/OS Resource provides a complete overview of the “health” of all critical system resources – especially those shared between different z/OS systems:

  • processors (including zAAP, zIIP, and crypto)
  • disks
  • physical control units
  • coupling facilities
  • channels.

An integrated view of the enterprise is presented identifying any saturation points or performance efficiency problems.
The time frame and resource causing the bottleneck is easily identified through intuitive color coding.

EPV for z/OS WLC supports IBM software costs policy, providing all the necessary metrics to manage the MSU utilization  – both at the system and the sub-system levels. EPV reports the highest “4 hour rolling average” value, which is used by IBM to calculate its monthly fee.

Performance Analysis know-how embedded
EPV for z/OS Workload provides a comprehensive view of all the workloads running on your systems. Utilizing extensive drill-down capabilities, workload performance and consumption can be explored at the address space or transaction level. For Batch, CICS, DDF, IMS, MQ and Websphere workloads, throughput, consumption and response times are identified for critical jobs and transactions.

EPV for z/OS Trend provides daily and monthly productivity and resource consumption trends at the system and workload levels, assisting in the understanding of workload growth and its impact on various systems. Advanced statistical methodology pinpoints positive or negative growth trends that lie outside of a normal distribution. Regression analysis is also performed to estimate CPU latent demand of saturated systems.

Automatic Control of Configuration Changes
EPV for z/OS Configuration provides a detailed report of the hardware and software configurations in z/OS environments, including the total DASD space by provider and physical control unit. EPV provides a global view of shared resources, such as machines (CEC), Coupling Facilities and Storage Processors by correlating data produced by different sources and systems.

EPV for z/OS audits configuration changes at the hardware, system, and software level.

Access to available data
EPV for z/OS uses standard measures, readily available in the z/OS environment, and supports various sources, such as ITRM (IT Resource Management), MXG (Merrill’s eXpanded Guide), or native SMF, RMF, and IMS data, limiting the number of variables, using intelligent filters and avoiding data duplication and redundancy. The product’s architecture is modular and user-friendly.

All reports are produced in simple static HTML pages and can be accessed by your favorite browser. All report tables can be exported individually, or combined, to an MS-Excel spreadsheet.

Requirements
EPV for z/OS is available in two versions: Standard or Plus

The requirements for EPV for z/OS Standard are:

  • Availability of an SAS System Base module at least on a PC;
  • Availability of one of the following products: SAS ITRM or MXG

EPV for z/OS Plus has no pre-requisites; it’s an “out-of-the-box” solution which integrates a “light” version of the EPV parser for SMF product to interpret the necessary SMF records and all other input data required.