Mainframes manage significant segments of data within large companies. As these enterprises face increasing volumes of data records, they seek new ways of securing and structuring critical data--such as financial information, customer data, and company resource data--that enable them to offer customers new services.

Fifty years ago, on April 7, 1964, IBM’s System/360 line of mainframe computers was released. At a press conference at the company’s Poughkeepsie facilities, Thomas Watson, Jr., IBM CEO, noted at the time that

It is the product of an international effort in IBM’s laboratories and plants and is the first time IBM has redesigned the basic internal architecture of its computers in a decade. The result will be more computer productivity at lower cost than ever before. This is the beginning of a new generation--not only of computers--but of their application in business, science and government [1].

Today’s IBM System z mainframe solutions facilitate the integration of operational data with analysis tools and enable cloud delivery in a secure environment while providing savings and increased value. IBM has developed a software solution, called system z personal development tool (zPDT), which emulates the IBM mainframe hardware. It covers not just the mainframe itself, but also the network and storage devices.

This book is the result of the authors’ activities toward improving and developing new techniques and methodologies applied to systems and subsystems. Recovery strategies are covered as well as the increasing availability, superior facilities for updating the operating systems, and upgrading of the subsystems without having to rebuild the system from scratch. As a result, this book is recommended as a very useful tool for all those who use the zPDT technology to create a virtual System z environment suitable for development, testing, and demonstration.

The IBM mainframe environment, zPDT technology, and methodologies are presented in the first chapter. Requirements and choices for creating a mainframe virtualized environment (MVE) are analyzed in chapter 2. The authors propose a methodology that includes establishing use cases, identifying requirements for virtualized system environments having considered the hardware options, recovery for system failures and outages, software updates, sharing time, and a fail-safe system. Designing the networking scheme, implementing the storage configuration, and installing and configuring the Linux operating system are stages presented in chapter 3, which aims to build the hypervisor host. The methodology proposed by the authors continues with creating a base system environment in chapter 4, creating a z/virtual machine (VM) environment in chapter 5, and establishing a direct access storage device (DASD) repository for a multi-server environment (MSE) in chapter 6. Pros and cons are indicated for choosing a particular proposed solution depending on the requirements. A fast implementation of mainframe operating systems is possible using the z/OS and z/VM DASD files supplied by the vendor. Solutions to optimize z/OS and z/VM DASD are available in chapter 7. In chapter 8, the readers are offered a very useful scheme with which one can migrate to zEnterprise mainframe DASD. The procedure for customizing the z/OS environment with symbols, described in chapter 9, allows a faster transition to a new operating system. Some work methods for updating the distributed server environment with new versions and levels of the operating systems are presented in chapter 10 by the authors. Three important techniques for system recovery are presented and illustrated in chapter 11: the full backup/restore recovery mechanism, the use of backup volumes, and the emergency recovery system. In chapter 12, the authors evaluate solutions for deploying virtualized mainframe environments: creating and hosting the deployment image on a network-attached storage (NAS) device, on a universal serial bus (USB) flash drive, or in the cloud. Pre-deployment requirements and post-deployment activities are highlighted and the deploy phase of the base image is analyzed depending on the hosting method chosen. Useful technical information is included in the five appendices: “Software Licensing” (chapter 13), “Setting the Standards and Conventions” (chapter 14), “IEASYS Member Example” (chapter 15), “LOAD Member Example” (chapter 16), and “Glossary” (chapter 17).

This book includes improvements and new techniques and methodologies applied to the systems and subsystems. The authors offer very well-reasoned solutions accompanied by case studies, which will be useful to specialists from the System z area. The book is made even more useful as the System z mainframe-based solutions offer an advanced systems management environment for significant segments of data within large companies.