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Status Functionality already exists
Workspace IBM Z and LinuxONE Systems Hardware
Categories HMC/Support Element (SE)
Created by Guest
Created on Aug 18, 2022

RELATED IDEAS

Provide a ascertained historical view of all installed and/or activated capacity records

Why is it useful?

In our installation a variety of different capacity records are used on multiple machines with frequent changes to the activated capacity levels. This makes it cumbersome to reconstruct the active capacity levels for any given point in time, as the change log has to be traced. Another way to access this information more easily and quickly is needed in a highly dynamic environment. A regularly recorded snapshot of all relevant details will be helpful to provide a quick view of the relevant details.

The usage of capacity records is governed by the contract. As such, the correct usage of the available records is mandatory to stay compliant with the contract. Historical recording is required for the customer to provide proof of this compliance.

Who would benefit?

The mentioned feature would benefit customers, contract managers as well as IBM themselves, as it will be more easy for all parties to check the usage of provided capacity records.

How should it work?

IBM should provide the status of all capacity records in a new SMF record, which is written in the SMF interval. The record should contain at least:

  • Record ID

  • Installation Status (Installed/Staged/Active)

  • Maximum activation levels for all different engine types

  • Current activation for all engine types

  • expiration date

  • date and time of last change of activation levels

This information is not yet available in this format.

In addition, all events regarding capacity records should be recorded in another subtype of the new SMF record. This record should be written as the event occurs. Possible events are at least:

  • Add

  • Download

  • Installation

  • Activation (=change of activated capacity level)

This subtype would correspond to the information already available in the csv file in resource link.

Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Feb 1, 2023
    Events for this type of information are already available in a few different ways, but since SMF is part of the operating environment probably z/OS BCPii event notifications would be the best way to get these events. Specifically, the Hwi_Event_CapacityChg and Hwi_Event_CapacityRecord events are related to temporary capacity. These events are architected to provide a minimal amount of information in the event and then allow the client application to then use subsequent BCPii API calls to get any information desired, which in this case would be making queries through BCPii to get information about capacity records and/or information about a CPC, such as number of processors, etc. We believe the these events and the subsequent queries provide the notification and information you are interested in.

    Brian Valentine, SE/HMC Development, is available to meet with Simon Bierwald if addition discussion is needed for a BCPii solution.
  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Oct 4, 2022

    Currently, part of the information we need is found in a csv file which can be obtained via resource link. There is no information available in SMF yet. The information in the csv only provides changes to the capacity records as they occur, as an "event log". Apart form that, we request a snapshot reporting to be established which provides all neccessary information for the given point in time and is recorded regularly.

    Regarding the compliance evidence infrastructure we conclude that this is not suited for our request. This new feature focuses on collecting information from different subsystems on a specific signal (i.e. on demand). Also, this is geard towards providing evidence of compliance to security rules (GDPR et al.). In this request, we are talking about complying with our IBM contract, which is a totally different topic.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |     Aug 22, 2022
    It would be helpful to us if you could provide some additional specific information. Where do you capture this information from today? For example, "we use field x from the SMF type 0 record and fields y and z from the SMF type 70 record, and we also use this other information that we get from some source other than SMF data".
    Also, are you familiar with the new compliance evidence data collection infrastructure that was recently delivered with APARs OA61443 and OA61444? This sounds like it might fit with that infrastructure.

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