z/OS Version 2 Release 4 4Q New Functions and Enhancements
It's that time of the quarter again and as always, z/OS is delivering new features and enhancements through its continuous delivery model without requiring the effort of a full release upgrade and with no impact to stability, complexity or costs.
Similar to past deliveries, this quarter's consists of functional enhancements that clients are entitled to and can enable with the corresponding APAR. New function APARs are collected here in a convenient reference format. See additional resource section below for a full list of past 2020 quarterly delivers.
---------- What's New ----------
New IBM z/OS Diagnostics Analyzer
IBM Data Privacy for Diagnostics is a z/OS capability that is available on the IBM z15 to help clients maintain control, when working with third-party vendors, by redacting data tagged as sensitive and creating a protected diagnostic dump that can be shared externally. The base capability has been generally available and provides z/OS APIs to tag sensitive user data as "sensitive = yes" or metadata as "sensitive = no."
The new z/OS Diagnostics Analyzer enhances sensitive data detection and redaction in system dumps by enabling clients to customize sensitive data patterns that are unique to their organization. It exploits built-in and custom identifiers to detect and redact additional sensitive data in previously untagged pages. Utilize the tagging feature and the z/OS Diagnostics Analyzer as post processing steps without impacting the dump capture time.
Support is available on z/OS V2.3 or z/OS V2.4:
Storage manager API support: PTF for APAR OA57633
Service aids support: PTF for APAR OA57570
z/OS Diagnostics Analyzer support: PTF for APAR OA58114
IBM z/OS Container Extensions (zCX)
We continue to deliver zCX enhancements to improve the capability to run Linux on z/OS.
- Support for IPv6. This enables zCX server to fully participate in an IPV6 network at the server address and client endpoints. This is designed to deliver improved performance and increased security for clients who require IPv6.
- zCX resource shortage z/OS alerts. These proactive alerts are sent to the z/OS system log (SYSLOG) or operations log (OPERLOG) to improve monitoring and automated operations. The server monitors used memory, root disk space, user data disk space, and swap space in the zCX instance periodically and issues messages to the zCX joblog and operator console when the usage rises to 50%, 70%, and 85% utilization. When returning below 50%, an information message is issued. This function is available with PTF for APAR OA60303.
- Increased disk capacity. The number of data and swap disks per appliance is increased to as many as 245. This enables zCX to address more data at one time and is delivered with the PTF for APAR OA60452.
IBM z/OS Management Facility (z/OSMF)
IBM z/OSMF provides a framework for managing various aspects of a z/OS system through a task oriented web browser interface. This quarter, z/OSMF delivers additional enhancements and new functionality to help drive its effort of automating traditional tasks and simplifying areas of system management to help reduce the level of expertise needed for managing a z/OS system.
Notable enhancements for this quarter are listed as follows:
- The z/OSMF desktop utilities are enhanced with the PTF for APAR PH28692. The search function is enhanced to provide typeahead capability for searching data sets, UNIX System Services (USS) files, and USS directories. The PTF for APAR PH30398 also adds the function of “create data set” into the z/OSMF desktop. Clients can create a new physical sequential or partitioned data set based on an existing data set, a predefined template, or fully specified attributes.
- z/OSMF startup time and resource consumption during startup is improved with the PTFs for APARs PH28921, PH28920, PH28971, PH28990, PH28451, PH29230, PH29243, PH28832, and PH28872. Actual results can vary, depending on the client's configuration.
- The workflow administrator can delete multiple workflow instances at a time. To perform a workflow on a remote sysplex, a single sign-on among z/OSMF instances is no longer strictly required. In the absence of a single sign-on, the request prompts for a user and password,if necessary. The "create new workflow instance" dialog now exploits the typeahead search for the workflow definition and workflow properties files. This can eliminate the need to provide the full data set name or path name.
- z/OSMF Ansible collection, is enhanced to provide data set and USS file operations. Several sample playbooks by use case as well as a quick configuration approach for z/OSMF dependencies are available here.
IBM z/OS Resource Monitoring Facility (RMF)
Enhancements in RMF include the capability to analyze the performance of recently delivered hardware using callable services as well as verification and warning health checks. This is designed to enable improved monitoring to aid in systems tuning and configuration.
- Information is gathered on the performance of callable service such as Integrated Cryptographic Service Facility (ICSF) format-preserving encryption, Feistel-based encryption (FFX), and quantum-safe (QSA) digital signatures. This is included with PTF for APAR OA59330.
- In addition to this enhancement, RMF provides the capability to analyze this data with the RMF Postprocessor Crypto hardware report. This is included with the PTF for APAR OA60202.
IBM z/OS transparent cloud tiering
z/OS DFSMSdss provides full volume dump support for transparent cloud tiering enables all I/O for full volume dumps to be performed by an IBM DS8000 directly to an IBM TS7700 enabled as an object store, or directly to cloud object storage. Clients can create these backup copies as needed without impacting other workloads due to minimal CPU consumption. This capability is provided with the PTF for APAR OA57526.