We are glad to inform you that we are extending the IBM Z Trial program to include IBM z/OS Data Gatherer and IBM SMF Explorer with Python. In this blog, we would like to share with you information about what those offerings are about and how you can get access and use them in the scope of the IBM Z Trial program.
IBM SMF Explorer with Python
IBM® SMF Explorer with Python, shortly called IBM SMF Explorer, is a Python framework intended to access System Management Facility (SMF) data directly from dump data sets. The framework uses the z/OS® Data Gatherer SMF REST Services to fetch data from a z/OS host. IBM SMF Explorer is a Python library, that you can use to write scripts, embed it into other applications or just fetch data interactively. Additionally, the Python ecosystem provides access to a large set of libraries for visualization, data analysis, machine learning and much more.
Both IBM SMF Explorer and z/OS Data Gatherer SMF REST Services are components of z/OS Data Gatherer.
Architecture
There are two parts of the solution:
To optimize the user experience, Jupyter Notebook tutorials are available to guide you on how to fetch, process, and visualize SMF raw data to enable graphical analysis.
SMF Explorer requires Data Gatherer SMF REST services to retrieve SMF records from the dump dataset in JSON format.
SMF Explorer with Python and z/OS Data Gatherer REST API services are available in z/OS 2.5 with APAR OA62081 and z/OS 3.1.
With an APAR OA64270, we introduced the support for SMF 30 records, all subtypes. You can find the full list of supporting SMF types and subtypes here.
IBM Z Trial
To allow the users to get some hands-on experience with SMF Explorer and z/OS Data Gatherer REST Services, we’ve created the IBM Z Trial for IBM z/OS Data Gatherer and IBM SMF Explorer with a set of scenarios that demonstrate their capabilities in a working z/OS environment.
Accessing the IBM Z Trial for IBM z/OS Data Gatherer and IBM SMF Explorer
You can register for this IBM Z Trial here. Within approximately two hours after signing up, you will receive an email with the credentials associated to you to access your own on-demand environment.
When you sign in to the IBM Z Trial environment, a window will open with a short description of the five available scenarios that are included in the IBM z/OS Data Gatherer and IBM SMF Explorer IBM Z Trial, see screenshot below.
About the order of scenarios
Although it’s recommended that you run the scenarios sequentially, they are completely independent from each other and each scenario can be executed on its own. We strongly recommend to you to run scenarios 1, 2, 3 back to back, because at the beginning of each of those scenarios, it is explained how to start JupyterLab and SMF Explorer. Once they are started, you don’t have to start them anymore for the other two scenarios. Scenario 4 is completely independent.
When you select a scenario, another window will open that indicates which products you are working with. For example, in the following scenario you are working with IBM SMF Explorer and IBM z/OS Data Gatherer:
Clicking Start Scenario for scenario 1, 2 and 3 opens a walk-through script to the right where you get the explanation how to start JupyterLab which opens Jupyter Notebooks in a browser. Click Next on the walk-through script to start your experience.
Clicking Start Scenario for scenarios 4 will open a Swagger UI and a walk-through script to its the right, after which you can start your experience by clicking Next on the walk-through script.
Enjoy your IBM Z Trial! We welcome any feedback that you can share with us.
To learn more about IBM z/OS Data Gatherer and IBM SMF Explorer, see the following information:
z/OS Data Gatherer
IBM SMF Explorer
IBM HOT TOPICS Article
IBM-SMF-Explorer GitHub Repository
IBM Webinar - IBM SMF Explorer with Python
zOS Academy - IBM SMF Explorer with Python
Product team:
@Giao Nguyen-Quynh - Developer, SMF Explorer
@Marija Perkovic - Product Owner
@Khadija Souissi - Product Manager, AI on z/OS
@Thomas Drews - CIM, z/OS Development Team, Boeblingen
A big THANK YOU to Z Trial team: Rosemary James, Mark Hostler, Paul Taylor, Devendar Rao, Vijay Katoch, Biao Hu and Beth Williams.