Context

Tool mentors explain how a tool can perform tasks, which are part of ITUP processes and activities. The tasks are listed as Related Elements in the Relationships section.

You can see the details of how processes and activities are supported by this tool mentor, by clicking the links next to the icons:

•   Problem Management
  •   Detect and Log Problem

Details

There are multiple methods for collecting incident data ranging from people calling a Help Desk, to a piece of software automatically reporting an incident in some machine readable form. Most Help Desk tools provide a data repository and reporting tools for the incidents that are reported by end users of a service. However, automated incident reporting can provide more detailed information and a larger sample of data for problem determination. Large quantities of sampled data can be both a blessing and a curse. Large amounts of data can show trends over time and allow visibility to exceptions but the large quantity typically needs to be summarized to be readable by users (human readable).

For systems such as z/OS, one method of machine-readable incident reporting is SMF records (System Measurement Facility). Platforms other than z/OS use system or application logs with unique message numbers to signify that an incident has occurred. This machine-readable data contains incidents that are an important source of problem prevention.

IBM® Tivoli® Decision Support for z/OS® provides a central repository for easy access to enterprise-wide IT information. Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS collects detailed systems management data generated by OS/390, z/OS, subsystems and selected distributed systems. It organizes it, stores it in a standard DB2 database, and presents it in graphic or tabular reports.

Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS consists of the base product and several additional features. The more data sources that have input to the database, the more visibility there is into the state of the IT environment. There are over 800 provided reports in Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS. Report styles vary from being an overview, to graphical trend analysis, to an exception report and detail data over a finite period of time. The data is stored using standard SQL and uses the power of z/OS for reporting and ad hoc query.

Examples of data sources for Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS are provided here along with examples of how they support proactive problem management:

• Tivoli Storage Manager - Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS has both detail and overview reports on sessions and data movement activities. For example, decreases in sessions counted over a 30-day time period can be evidence of network problems that are impacting data backup in the enterprise.
• DB2 - There are reports for incidents such as application wait times and buffer pool exceptions. These incidents can be a symptom of needed DB2 tuning that is required before the times impact the IT service that is supporting the business.
• z/OS DASD managed by DFSMS - There are reports for DASD I/O errors that can be generated to show incidents that are leading to a DASD outage.
• z/OS statistics - There are reports showing application ABENDs on z/OS, tape errors, and applications that are waiting on shared resources. These incidents can be evidence of z/OS software problems, capacity issues, or a configuration problem that will impact the business.

Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS contributes to proactive problem management by collecting incident data from a broad spectrum of IT resources. Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS consolidates and summarizes the data to allow incident trending to prevent problems before they occur and impact the IT services of a business.

For More Information

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