BMC CMF MONITOR

DATASHEET
BMC CMF MONITOR
Manage and improve system performance with BMC’s highly efficient, low-cost
alternative to IBM® Resource Management Facility
Key benefits
Business challenge
» Reduces CP cost by
exploiting IBM zIIP processors
and by sharing 100 percent of
BMC MainView for z/OS data
collectors
Data centers must meet performance objectives and increase productivity in both mono and parallel sysplex
» Provides views of single or
multiple systems (across
sysplexes) to rapidly identify
workload bottlenecks, tune
WLM, and adjust system
parameters and capacity
environments in a cost-effective manner. They need to measure selected areas of system activity and delays
to understand how the systems and workloads are performing. Detailed SMF records are needed to help
determine and show system trends, delay, and capacity issues. This information needs to be provided in realtime, as well as in historical modes, to help ensure that business processes are meeting service level
commitments — now and into the future.
It is no longer acceptable for this type of capacity and performance monitoring to be done in a separate and
non-integrated fashion. IT management requires a single interface, which can be accessed either through a
3270 or through the Web. This interface must provide powerful online reporting; on-demand graphing and
» Rapidly identifies workload
delays and contention
issues on general processors,
as well as on IBM specialty
processors, such as zIIPs,
zAAPs, IFLs, and Crypto.
publishing of critical capacity and performance data; and the ability to collect and write a broad range of SMF
» Provides real-time data for
interval (ex.15 min), short-term
(ex. 15 seconds), and longterm (ex. one hour) on the
same screen
of the SMF Type-70 records and is the only high-performance, low-cost alternative to RMF. From a single
» Simplifies the management
of z/OS via mainframe-centric,
web GUI that provides a single
point of control for an unlimited
number of z/OS systems
» Integrates with all BMC
MainView monitoring
products, providing a
complete mainframe
monitoring, reporting, and
capacity solution
» Participates in the hybrid
data center, thus enabling
enterprise-wide monitoring,
reporting, capacity, and
automation solutions
data — and it must act as an integral component of an overall monitoring solution.
The BMC solution
BMC CMF MONITOR, an integrated component of the BMC MainView monitoring solution, is a compatible
replacement for IBM’s Resource Measurement Facility (RMF™). BMC CMF MONITOR produces 100 percent
pane, BMC CMF MONITOR provides real-time and historical data about workloads, resources, devices, and
delay activities; and provides you with the data to manage and improve system performance across all of your
z/OS® images. BMC CMF MONITOR not only reports on specialty engines, such as zIIPs, zAAPs, and
Crypto, but also offloads its own CP resources to IBM zIIPs.
SMF data
BMC CMF MONITOR has been helping customers monitor capacity and manage system resources for more
than 30 years. BMC CMF MONITOR creates the SMF records (required by IBM) to help debug a variety of
hardware and software support issues. The SMF 70 records provided are essential to accurately detect system
capacity issues, monitor system and workload trending, and model future capacity requirements to ensure
upgrades are done when needed. BMC CMF MONITOR also provides additional SMF 240 records that gather
detailed information on the performance of resources, such as Cache, TSO commands, CSA usage, and
more. Many of the SMF records created by BMC CMF MONITOR can be used as input into other applications,
such as IBM SLR, CA-MICS, and SAS MXG.
IBM zIIP exploitation
Due to its inherent superior operating efficiency and unique ability to execute between 30-65 percent of BMC
CMF MONITOR overhead onto the zIIP processor, BMC CMF MONITOR is able to release high-cost ”general
purpose” engine capacity back to the business
One data collection engine
BMC CMF MONITOR provides the ability to collect data once and share among BMC MainView monitoring
products, reducing the need to run redundant data collectors and waste CP cycles. The extractor collects data
for both the batch reports and online interfaces. BMC CMF MONITOR and BMC MainView for z/OS products
can run in the same address space, therefore eliminating the requirement of running multiple monitoring
address spaces.
Capacity Provisioning Manager support
BMC CMF MONITOR supports Capacity Provisioning Manager to optimize effective use of “capacity on
demand.”
IBM Health Checker
BMC CMF MONITOR provides views that support IBM Health Checker, which enables proactive monitoring of
these indicators as part of the BMC MainView infrastructure.
Multiple data collection options
BMC CMF MONITOR enables you to collect data at different intervals simultaneously. It provides Continuous
Performance Monitor (CPM) and Intermitted Performance Monitor (IPM), both of which can either write to SMF
or to an alternative output file. You can also control monitor duration, samplers used, and sample rates for
unique granularity.
Figure 1. Data collection options
Unified architecture
BMC CMF MONITOR is built on the BMC MainView infrastructure, which provides the following capabilities at
no extra charge:
»
Single system image (SSI) — Provides the ability to monitor and manage your workloads across many
z/OS systems and sysplexes from one view. SSI provides more critical system and workload information
to help you make better decisions about your sysplexes and allows single-point-of-control for your jobs,
storage, devices, and workloads — without requiring monitoring products to be installed and maintained
on multiple platforms.
»
Threshold advisor – Makes use of built-in analytics to recommend and maintain accurate thresholds on
critical metrics. Every z/OS is analyzed to determine the normal usage of system resources driven by the
different applications at different time during the processing cycle.
»
Dynamic thresholds — Automatically loads and manages when and where thresholds are changed.
Thresholds that are used in data views and alarm definitions can dynamically change based on time-ofday workload requirements. Dynamic thresholds automatically update best-practice metric thresholds for
the system infrastructure across the sysplex and the business application components.
»
Integration — Integrates z/OS performance-based events with enterprise Business Service
Management (BSM) environments. With BMC CMF MONITOR, you can create BMC MainView Alarm
Manager alarms that feed into your enterprise-wide impact and event management solutions. Your z/OS
systems provide much better visibility into the impact of z/OS-based outages or slowdowns on your
underlying business applications.
»
Multiple online viewing options — Provides the flexibility to display data using the BMC MainView
Windows-based 3270 interface and through BMC MainView Explorer, a no-charge, intelligent,
mainframe-centric, web interface. Both interfaces provide the ability to view real-time and historical data
on the same screen. BMC MainView Explorer provides additional features that include topology, Gantt
charts, tree, gauges, and graphs (bar, area, 2D line, and 3D line), export and published data in JPEG or
HTML, and adjustable auto-refresh rate by view.
By utilizing BMC MainView Explorer (the BMC MainView common mainframe-centric web interface),
BMC CMF MONITOR provides real-time and historical data that can be displayed along with any other
BMC MainView monitoring and automation product data. This simplifies how you view, manage,
automate, and proactively monitor your mainframe environments.
Figure 2. BMC MainView Explorer
»
Capacity — BMC Capacity Management for Mainframes utilizes the SMF records created by BMC CMF
MONITOR to accurately predict future system requirements to ensure application performance is not
impacted by the lack of IT resources. Where critical business applications span subsystems, such as
®
®
®
CICS , DB2 , IMS™, WebSphere MQ, and WebSphere Application Server, BMC Capacity
Management for Mainframes provides detailed analysis of complex subsystem transaction data to create
application views of the complete business workload. With this unique capability, performance reporting
and predictive planning can be accomplished in terms of business applications instead of by technology
silo.
»
Reporting — BMC Performance Reporting for Mainframes, part of BMC Capacity Management for
Mainframes, is a performance analysis and reporting package for z/OS mainframe systems. It provides
critical system performance and capacity management, long-term tracking, trending, and detailed
application-level performance information for CICS, DB2, IMS, WebSphere MQ, and WebSphere
Application Server subsystems to provide a complete performance view of your z/OS environments. A
point-and-click GUI, coupled with extensive drill-down capabilities, provides actionable results quickly and
easily.
Alignment with best practices
BMC provides best-practice manuals to help ensure your success when designing, installing, implementing,
and maintaining your monitoring environment. BMC MainView infrastructure provides the flexibility to
customize your monitoring environment to your specific needs. What’s more, because it can expand easily with
true plug-and-play technology, as your environment grows, so can your monitoring solution.
What’s more, with BMC Best Practices - Event Management, BMC provides guidelines to quickly implement
an alert management solution with out-of-the-box alarms for all the BMC MainView monitoring products.
Additional alerts can be easily built and maintained to meet unique monitoring needs.
Part of a comprehensive solution
BMC CMF MONITOR is part of BMC Software’s comprehensive portfolio of mainframe service management
®
solutions, including BMC MainView for z/OS, BMC MainView for USS, BMC MainView for Linux -Servers,
BMC MainView for CICS, BMC MainView for DB2, BMC MainView for IMS, BMC MainView for WebSphere
MQ, BMC MainView for WebSphere Application Server, BMC MainView for Network Management, BMC
MainView AutoOPERATOR, BMC MainView Console Management for zEntprise and BMC MainView SRM.
As a key part of Business Service Management from BMC, the BMC MainView solutions support and manage
business processes across the enterprise. Add-on functionality includes:
»
BMC Atrium Discovery for z/OS - Licensed Add-On — Builds and maintains mainframe configuration
items
»
BMC Event Management System Adaptor for z/OS — Sends alerts and provides two-way
communication from BMC MainView AutoOPERATOR to BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management
This integration provides enterprise-wide monitoring and management of your business processes at the CI
level.
BMC MainView: Ensure your success
If the mainframe is a critical part of your business, then you do not want to trust its availability and performance
to sub-standard or cobbled-together monitoring products. BMC MainView solutions deliver distinctly better
software, designed specifically to provide a fully integrated set of capabilities for multi-image, multi-system
environments, and built to ensure maximum availability and performance. They are your best investment for
ensuring your future success.
Learn More
To learn more, please visit www.bmc.com.
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