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So, the z/OS version 1, release 7 is upon us, but so what? Well, there are a lot of capabilities that can dramatically simplify and empower your business. This is especially the case if you are entering the daring, brave new world of on-demand business. If you’re looking for a solid virtualization technology the z/OS release V1R7 is a fantastic way to embark on that quest. If you need extended scalability, availability or networking capabilities the z/OS is certainly your answer. Security is another factor. If you’re seeking tighter security, the z/OS release V1R7 provides new tools and capabilities that can make that happen. The z/OS V1R7 also extends the capabilities of a self-managing, self tuning environment.

Below is a very brief summary of the highlights that fall into these categories:

• z/OS Virtualization Engine
• Scalability
• Availability and continuous operations
• Network and application expansion and dispersion
• Usability
• Security

IBM’s Virtualization Engine & Enterprise Workload Manager provides cross-system control, management and optimisation of server computing on an automatic basis. The process is driven along by and end-to-end application performance monitor that enables self tuning capabilities. The Virtualised Engine is based on the z/OS Enterprise Workload Manager that was available way back in December of 2004.

With the new z/OS V1R7, Scalability has been greatly enhanced. With z990 processors able to provide single image, 32-way processor support. In addition to this, 7,257 extents per VSAM component is now supported, 16,777,215 is now the top end number of tracks for non-extended sequential data sets, increased DFSMShsm and DFSMSrmm is now provided for certain control data sets and DFMShsm data sets per tape now exceed one million. And not least, 64 bit support for VSAM RLS is enabled meaning more locks per structure, connectors are now available for cross-system extended services and other misc. extensions have been added.

Availability and Continuous Operations now include the SRM, or system resource manager and enhancements that allow capacity upgrades or downgrades on a Sub-Capacity Processor (CP). This allows a much more granular technique for dynamic adaptation to real processor capacity requirements. In addition to this, the extended remote copy, or XRC, and system logger now support asynchronous writes to log stream staging data sets. This also enhances the performance and throughput of the IMS and the CICS. (Information Management System)

Network and application expansion and dispersion now offers improvements to the z/OS Load Balancing Advisor and Optimised sysplex routing that provides enhanced performance data and tuning. In addition, sockets performance is enhanced through the implementation of the Advanced Sockets Application Programming Interface.

.Overall usability improvements include Unicode support that now dynamically loads conversion tables on demand along with operator commands to provide this function also being included. FROMKEY and TOKEY are now supported for IDCAMS, REPRO and MERGECAT to help simplify the moving of catalogue entries to a different catalogue. RMF, or the Resource Measurement Facility, has now been extended to provide zFS monitoring, DFSMSmm now supports issuance of RMM subcommands via a client/server API. Health check capabilities for Hardware and Configuration Manager are also now provided. Not least, an operator command to change SMS volume status and a misc. Enterprise Extender along with and SNA usability enhancement are both now readily available.
Mixed case password support is now supported for new security measures that aim to extend password combinations to include both lower case and mixed case letters. Mixed case password support is provided for RACF consoles, FTP, z/OS UNIX and TSO/e. Lastly but certainly not least, support of the Network Address Translation (NAT) is also available.