Home > Tuning Your DFSMShsm Environment Using Mainstar’s HSM Reporter/Manager Product

Tuning Your DFSMShsm Environment Using Mainstar’s HSM Reporter/Manager Product

There are many HSM reporting products available on the market today, and companies are looking for products that can provide multiple functions such as reporting, administration and tuning of a DFSMShsm environment and the data it controls.

Most of these products report on migration, backup, recycle, what was successful and what was not successful - but the end result is they are all just DFSMShsm reporting products.

HSM Reporter/Manager (HRM) Version 9.2 takes DFSMShsm reporting two steps further than these other reporting products by providing users with the ability to administer DFSMShsm requests and tasks from within the product while tuning DFSMShsm for requests and scheduled work.

In version 9.2 of HRM, technical staff can review the different DFSMShsm information from within the product, giving them the ability to see and understand what DFSMShsm is doing and enable technicians to be proactive.

The screen below lists only some of the administrative information HRM gives technical staff who are responsible for managing DFSMShsm and its workload.

Figure 1: DFSMShsm Host Reports Sample

Having this information available for referencing and viewing from within a product allows for administering of DFSMShsm more efficiently, and can help reduce the overall time spent daily trying to manage DFSMShsm and its data.

As for how HRM can help you tune your DFSMShsm environment, ask yourself this simple question; "Do you know what it costs for DFSMShsm to do scheduled and requested work"?

This type of information is often only available from the capacity-planning group, or is not available at all. As a result, administrators often overlook or fail to properly tune their DFSMShsm environments. However, it is important to remember that DFSMShsm continues to run 24x7 with minimal or no scheduled down time.

The sample report below is the HSM Function Costs report provided in HRM v9.2. This report gives the user the ability to know how much it has cost for HSM to perform its daily scheduled and requested work.

Figure 2: Sample HSM Function Costs

The key benefit to having this information available is that technical staff can quickly determine what it is costing for HSM to move data, and they can easily identify areas where HSM can be tuned for optimum performance.

As an example, it cost this site $342.00 today to backup eligible data by HSM, which would equate to $87,210 annually when running incremental HSM backups (Monday through Friday - 255 work days per year). If a site were looking to reduce these costs, users can drill down to the detail view and decide if they should change a management class to backup certain data less frequently. This same process can be used for migrating data, and a site could reduce HSM resource usage by allowing certain data to expire on primary DASD, rather than having HSM migrate that data to ML1 or ML2.

You have seen two reports and examples showing where Mainstar’s HSM Reporter/Manager version 9.2 is not just another HSM reporting tool, but can help technical staff administer DFSMShsm more quickly and efficiently. Thus not only reducing your HSM resource usage, but also providing a path for reducing the time and effort needed daily for managing and maintaining a healthy, cost effective, HSM environment.

The new reporting and enhanced functionality in HRM provides the user with the information and knowledge to better manage and use HSM to its maximum efficiency. For more information please contact your Mainstar Account representative or email Mainstar at info@mainstar.com.