Evil Twins: 10 Network Tunables Every Admin Must Understand
September 20, 2017
Setting network tunables incorrectly on AIX systems is a very common problem. Nearly every tunable, be it CPU, memory, networking or storage, affects others to some degree.
ArticlesTop IT Concerns
September 11, 2017
We’ve heard it at trade shows and read about it in surveys: The top challenges for IBM Power Systems* clients are security, high availability and modernization. It’s no surprise because every CIO needs to keep their data safe and available in order to stay competitive—all while keeping the company’s name out of headlines covering the […]
ArticlesCICS Tools Identify Performance Issues
August 1, 2017
This article focuses on CICS performance. On the mainframe CICS is known as CICS Transaction Server (TS), but on other platforms the product is named TXSeries, and for special functions, CICS Transaction Gateway. All products are developed and supported by CICS development, and are designed to interact with each other via facilities such as CICS […]
ArticlesWords in Action
August 1, 2017
Imagine being able to predict the onset of a mental health condition before it hits. Or receive a diagnosis at home instead of a psychiatrist’s office. Or being able to adjust your medications based on patterns in your speech when you casually talk with family and friends. Within the next five years, you may not […]
ArticlesAIO: The Fast Path to Great Performance
July 19, 2017
Asynchronous input and output (AIO) is an essential performance feature of AIX. Without it, our world would be a much slower place.
Take a Holistic View
June 19, 2017
If your enterprise system has gotten more complex over the last few years, with new applications and users, it may be time to revisit your hardware configuration to optimize performance. Companies benefit when they practice taking a holistic view of enterprise systems every two years or so, says Jaqui Lynch, a solutions architect and independent […]
ArticlesUnderstanding and Tuning CPU Throughput
June 14, 2017
Few topics related to AIX performance analysis and tuning are more misunderstood than CPU throughput: how databases, applications, middleware and utilities use CPUs in an IBM Power Systems environment. What follows is a basic primer on determining CPU throughput and usage in your AIX systems. By combining this knowledge with performance statistics, you can tune […]
ArticlesWhy AIX Fits Well With Hybrid Cloud Strategies
June 1, 2017
In the last two years, we have seen a dramatic upswing in the number of IBM clients that are investing in full-scale projects to modernize their critical IT infrastructure. Some are looking to optimize their software licenses by consolidating workloads onto smaller footprints and moving nonessential capacity to offsite clouds. Others are developing new applications […]
ArticlesSlicing Time: Curing the Context Switch in AIX
May 17, 2017
Now that we’ve laid a solid groundwork for performance analysis, I'll show you how to tune your systems based on information you’ve gleaned from your diagnostic data.
ArticlesWhy Organizations Should Reconsider Their Current Chargeback Systems
April 1, 2017
Imagine Mary, Fred and George are gathered for a budget meeting with Ellen, their company’s CIO, to discuss another budget shortfall. Ellen asks, “What caused this million-dollar shortfall?” George says, “We think it’s related to the decision by accounting to shift one of their major workloads from our Power Systems* platforms to our VMware tower. […]