Is Inter-CP Quiesce time counted as CPU time?

2011-03-08 Thread Gary M. Dennis
If a z/VM guest partially or completely purges the TLB on a z10 or z196, is the time required to quiesce CPs to coordinate the requested purge counted toward total CPU time for the guest requesting the purge? If so does the guest requesting the purge get tagged for all the CPU time required to coor

Seinfeld's Contribution to the The Principles of Operation

2010-10-07 Thread Gary M. Dennis
There is only one place in z Architecture Principles of Operation where the word substantially is used. Even more surprising than its use is the fact that it appears immediately before the word "accurate". My interest in the reference bit, though passing, is sincere since I would like to hang my h

Re: Maximum Virtual Storage

2010-10-01 Thread Gary M. Dennis
al > storage and DASD to support a few of those VMs, their paging and dump > space requirements. :-) > > 11010100100010011001001011010100111001101001100100111010001111 > 0110011001 > > Mike Walter > Hewitt Associates > The opinions expressed herein ar

Maximum Virtual Storage

2010-10-01 Thread Gary M. Dennis
What is the maximum guest virtual storage supported by z/VM? --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis Mantissa Corporation

Re: Mixed page volume sizes

2010-09-30 Thread Gary M. Dennis
S if you had guests averaging 18GB each, and you follow recommendations for page volume utilization (50% as I understand it), Mod 9s would yield around 4GB useable page space each. That would give you 100 such images per VM .. (250 volumes times the 4GB/volume divided by 18GB per image

Re: ACM award - they deserve it....

2010-03-31 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Less than an hour before reading this thread I had IPLed two x86 operating systems under z/VM 5.3. One is a tiny OS used as a checkpoint after major changes to the x86 virtualization layer. It's just a way to make sure the puzzle is still assembled more or less correctly. The other OS is DSL. Th

VPN into Second Level VM

2010-02-02 Thread Gary M. Dennis
We are developing on a second level VM system with access through VPN. Regardless of the VPN client location (Home, office ), ISP download/upload speed and chip speed of the client machine, we can¹t seem to get any more than 135K bytes per second over the VPN. This number holds true for both FTP

Fixed length field alignment degradation

2010-01-07 Thread Gary M. Dennis
The POPS For System z contains the following note: " Programming Note: For fixed-field-length operations with field lengths that are a power of 2, significant performance degradation is possible when storage operands are not positioned at addresses that are integral multiples of the operand length

Re: VM Best Practices

2009-12-16 Thread Gary M. Dennis
In the movie "In Search of the Holy Grail", the knights who say "nee" could not bear to hear a certain words. One of those words was "it". "It" appears that best practice may be not to ask about - (words redacted). Thanks to all who responded. --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis Mantiss

VM Best Practices

2009-12-14 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Watching ³A Christmas Story² makes me wonder if you can ³shoot your eye out² through errors of omission with a VM system. Can anyone point me to a source for z/VM ³Best Practices² that addresses low level system recovery (essentially disaster recovery). Thanks Gary Dennis Mantissa Corporation

Re: Questions - zVM Limits/Hardware Support

2009-11-02 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Extremely useful. The limits document by by Bill Bitner and another by the same author on performance are great resources. If you attempted to configure a VM system with 700 active users each having an average working set of 8GB each what kind of train wreck could that create? All recommendations

Questions - zVM Limits/Hardware Support

2009-10-28 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Questions... What is the maximum page space supported by zVM? What is the supported real storage limit for the hardware and for VM itself? Does anyone have experience with a zVM system having over 500 non-CMS guest systems? What is the highest total sustained I/O rate you have witnessed on a V

Chunk (RAW Block) access to DS8000 storage

2009-07-30 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Does anyone know of a way to access very large chunks of DS8000 storage without minidisk definitions? We are looking for a way to allocate substantial increments of storage (several terabytes at a time) with the least administrative overhead. --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis Mantissa Corporation

Re: Shared File System Interface

2009-05-01 Thread Gary M. Dennis
³Twitchy² - is a squirrel and best friend of Wolf W. Wolf in Hoodwinked. ³twitchy² as used below makes me, well Twitchy. Could you elaborate on why use of SFS via NFS ³Sort of makes the z guys twitchy² --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis Mantissa Corporation On 5/1/09 7:39 AM, "Dean, David

Shared File System Interface

2009-04-29 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Is there any documented APPC interface to SFS for non-CMS operating systems? --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis

2A8 Diagnose Undocumented return code

2009-04-22 Thread Gary M. Dennis
While attempting a ³Establish Device Connection² we receive a CC 2 with a return code of x¹10¹ Anyone know what this means? The documentation is the most recent CP programming services. Thanks --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis Mantissa Corporation

Re: *SIGNAL Service Experience

2009-04-22 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Only A to B as we have no broadcast requirement. --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis Mantissa Corporation On 4/21/09 4:08 PM, "Alan Altmark" wrote: > On Tuesday, 04/21/2009 at 01:55 EDT, "Gary M. Dennis" > wrote: > >> > The IUCV tests seemed insensitive to t

Re: *SIGNAL Service Experience

2009-04-21 Thread Gary M. Dennis
4/20/09 12:53 AM, "Alan Altmark" wrote: > On Friday, 04/17/2009 at 12:16 EDT, "Gary M. Dennis" > wrote: >> IF >> you have experience using *SIGNAL service for high volumes > > To my knowledge, the only exploiter of *SIGNAL is GCS, which has been u

*SIGNAL Service Experience

2009-04-17 Thread Gary M. Dennis
IF you have experience using *SIGNAL service for high volumes THEN Could you provide information (or simply observation) relating to overhead, latency? ELSEIF You know compelling reasons this service should not be considered for very high signal volumes THEN This is an e

Re: File System - If you had everything, where would you put it?

2009-04-04 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Based on the response the assumption *seems* to be that data spaces are being considered for the shared data. That is not the case. I interpret the diag x'248' to mean that the source ALET can (also) be that of the host primary address space containing the data (<=a(31 bit)). On 4/4/09 5:34 A

Re: File System - If you had everything, where would you put it?

2009-04-03 Thread Gary M. Dennis
'push' on write? :-) > > In any case, Alan is right, and the lowest latency way for virtual machin > es > to share data is with a DCSS. > > cheers, Jeff > > > On Fri, 3 Apr 2009 16:47:58 -0500, Gary M. Dennis om> > wrote: > >> >Something

Re: File System - If you had everything, where would you put it?

2009-04-03 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Something along these lines Guests pull on read Servers pull on write Async only --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis Mantissa 0 ... living between the zeroes ... 0 On 4/3/09 4:26 PM, "Alan Altmark" wrote: > On Friday, 04/03/2009 at 03:38 EDT, "Gary M. Dennis" > wrot

Re: File System - If you had everything, where would you put it?

2009-04-03 Thread Gary M. Dennis
sts > and a file server of some sort? > > Gary M. Dennis wrote: >> Jeff, >> >> What I was trying to determine if there was a way to use ZFS on OpenSolaris >> System z as a high speed space management vehicle while bypassing >> conventional transport layers? For

Diagnose X'248' - Copy to Primary

2009-04-03 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Can anyone comment on the overhead (or lack thereof) relating to use of this diagnose. Thanks --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis 0 ... living between the zeroes... 0

Re: File System - If you had everything, where would you put it?

2009-04-03 Thread Gary M. Dennis
) such that an interface in the appliance could act as a local proxy for each guest using the service. Regards, Gary --. .- .-. -.-- 0 ... living between the zeroes... 0 On 4/3/09 11:29 AM, "Jeff Savit" wrote: > "Gary M. Dennis" wrote: >> > 1. How

Re: File System - If you had everything, where would you put it?

2009-04-01 Thread Gary M. Dennis
r than that, you have to use SFS or BFS, and both need some work to do > continuous availability. Minidisks won¹t work for this. > > On 4/1/09 5:32 PM, "Gary M. Dennis" wrote: > >> Is there a VM I/O management system available which will: >> >> 1. Supp

File System - If you had everything, where would you put it?

2009-04-01 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Is there a VM I/O management system available which will: 1. Support space allocation requests for guests on a sparse basis? The file server needs to make the guest believe it actually has the entire allocation while only tying up space in the pool the guest actually used. 2. Support Async I/O re

Re: Diagnose x'250' / z/VM I/O scheduling

2009-03-30 Thread Gary M. Dennis
From: The IBM z/VM Operating System >> [mailto:ib...@listserv.uark.edu] On Behalf Of Gary M. Dennis >> Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 7:39 AM >> To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU >> Subject: Diagnose x'250' / z/VM I/O scheduling >> >> Given >> >>

Diagnose x'250' / z/VM I/O scheduling

2009-03-30 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Given A file pool consisting of 5 VDEV files on 5 separate real devices 2 cylinders per device 4096 block size When: a block chain is given Diag x'250' (async) for either read or write such that 4 blocks are written to or read from each track within the 5 files. Qu

Thanks All

2009-03-08 Thread Gary M. Dennis
On behalf of the zVos development team I want to express our thanks to the membership of this list. Many of your discussions have helped our effort enormously. When I joined this list almost exactly a year ago, I did so with the anticipation that we might need help if we got behind the curve techn

CMS threading, Preemption, Involuntary vs Voluntary loss of control

2008-12-21 Thread Gary M. Dennis
CMS Multitasking Application Programming documentation draws a distinction between voluntary and involuntary loss of control by a thread. Blocking and yielding in a thread are easily understood as causes for voluntary loss of control. Preemption would appear to be just as easily understood. Howeve

.zVos System z/VM Connectivity - Men or Mice

2008-12-09 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Over the last few weeks we have determined (without equivocation) that we are z/VM communications mice. Communications men or women would have dispatched the following problem forthwith. What we are attempting to do is describe our connectivity requirements for testing zVos to IBM¹s Dallas develo

Re: Virtual machine 'escape'

2008-11-04 Thread Gary M. Dennis
What effect would this same hack have on the intended target if the x86 system being targeted was running as a guest under z/VM? Wouldn't the ill effects be reduced by the wall between virtual guests inherent with z/VM? On 11/4/08 11:42 AM, "David Boyes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> It see

Re: Value added by z/VM versus VMWARE

2008-11-04 Thread Gary M. Dennis
If z/VM supported virtual x86 systems, that support would make the platforms extremely competitive and, potentially, cause a sea change in the source of computing resource for x86. Considering the average CPU utilization for x86 desktop systems (less than 15% by some estimates), such support could

Re: VM Virtual CPUs and Threaded CMS Applications

2008-10-20 Thread Gary M. Dennis
tra processors. If > you¹re not invoking CMS services from non-base threads then I guess that this > won¹t be an issue for you. > > Mark Gillis > Principal Software Engineer > Tel: +61 2 8898 2678 > Fax: +61 2 8898 2600 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > From: The IBM z/VM

VM Virtual CPUs and Threaded CMS Applications

2008-10-18 Thread Gary M. Dennis
If you do not have experience with threaded CMS application development, I suggest you read anything but the balance of of this email. I have an application that runs under CMS and consists of three distinct layers. 1. The top layer is some virtualized x86 OS. 2. The middle layer performs x86 to

Full volume minidisk FTP

2008-09-09 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Using VMFTP, how is the best way to transmit full volume minidisks (mixed CMS, VSE, and z/OS) to a backup site? --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis

Re: IUCV - What's wrong with this picture?

2008-08-27 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Alan, Thanks. Especially for 5 through 9. On 8/27/08 12:37 PM, "Alan Altmark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't understand why you want to use temporary connections. I don't. The original idea was to have connections for each guest active all the time **so long as the associated overhead wou

Re: IUCV - What's wrong with this picture?

2008-08-27 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Thanks for the response on the IUCV questions. I have included below item 6 from the thread origin and a snippet from John Baker's response. Maybe I should have placed more emphasis on item 6. The server machine is going to be updating the buffer areas in all the connected client machines. There

IUCV - What's wrong with this picture?

2008-08-25 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Assumptions: 0. A VM server machine 1. A cluster of client virtual machines (possibly thousands) 2. n buffers are allocated for each client virtual machine 3. Each buffer contains table elements that require (a) Element ageing (b) Element deletion when invalidated by: 1. lack of

Re: OSA Adapter TCP/IP stack association limit?

2008-08-07 Thread Gary M. Dennis
On 8/6/08 3:48 PM, "Alan Altmark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Yes, there is (the PRIROUTER option), but who cares? Define the VSWITCH > as ETHERNET (layer 2), not IP. Does this approach get around the stack limit some way? If we try to put 800 machines on a VLAN, will this blow the limit refere

Re: OSA Adapter TCP/IP stack association limit?

2008-08-06 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Will using VSWITCH get us around the 640 limit per OSA adapter? --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis On 8/6/08 1:35 PM, "Mark Post" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>> On 8/6/2008 at 2:24 PM, in message >>>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, > "Gary M. Dennis&qu

OSA Adapter TCP/IP stack association limit?

2008-08-06 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Did I read somewhere (the "where" being a place I cannot at this point locate) that the number of IP stacks which could be associated with a single OSA adapter was 640? Running several thousand desktop systems on System z is meaningful only if those operating systems can access a (the) network. I

Re: z/VM 5.4 Workloads

2008-08-05 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Can someone point me to the source of the announcement excerpt below? --. .- .-. -.-- Gary Dennis Mantissa Corporation On 8/5/08 11:51 AM, "Lionel B. Dyck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > This is an interesting bullet in the announcement: > > Moving selected Linux, Windows®, and UNIX® workl

Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 architecture - NOT.

2008-08-01 Thread Gary M. Dennis
32 and 16 bit. The boot loaders used and FreeDos required incorporation of 16 bit support. Monumental pain. We don't see 64 bit support being problematic though. Gary On 8/1/08 9:31 AM, "Adam Thornton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Does z/VOS do x86_64 or just 32-bit x86? Actually, can you lis

Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 architecture - NOT.

2008-07-31 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Apologies for not responding to this thread in a more timely fashion. I had a flood of emails after the initial post. Speed OR Portability Adam is closer than he knows about the approach we have taken on z/VOS. First, he is right when he guessed "almost-certainly assembly". We have tried both Q

Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 architecture - NOT.

2008-07-24 Thread Gary M. Dennis
9:06 AM, "Mary Anne Matyaz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gary, if it runs native windows, will it also then run x86 linux? That seems > to be one of the barriers for us, that z/linux may not support certain x86 > linux > applications. > Thanks, > Mary A

Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 architecture

2008-07-22 Thread Gary M. Dennis
correct? > > Thanks and have a good one. > > DJ > - Original Message - > From: "Gary M. Dennis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU > Subject: Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 > architecture > Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:02:

Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 architecture

2008-07-22 Thread Gary M. Dennis
m your system. > > > -Original Message- > > From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Gary M. Dennis > Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 2:03 PM > To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU > Subject: Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 archite

Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 architecture

2008-07-22 Thread Gary M. Dennis
he IBM z/VM Operating System >> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gary M. Dennis >> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 1:03 PM >> To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU >> Subject: Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 architecture >> >> This was our post to the zd net blog. &g

Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 architecture

2008-07-22 Thread Gary M. Dennis
dy? > ;-) ) > > Regards, > Richard Schuh > > > >> -Original Message- >> From: The IBM z/VM Operating System >> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gary M. Dennis >> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 11:03 AM >> To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU >

Re: Nice idea in blog: Should we toss x86 architecture

2008-07-22 Thread Gary M. Dennis
This was our post to the zd net blog. "Maybe we already have. In Q1 2009 Mantissa will deliver a system that permits unaltered Windows operating systems to run under z/VM. Using a desktop appliance running RDC, users will be able to connect to their virtual Windows images running in the VM envir

CMS Multi-tasking - How is it different from z/OS task management

2008-07-10 Thread Gary M. Dennis
We are attempting to leverage z/VM CMS multi-tasking capabilities for Windows® thread management. We have substantial z/OS experience with regard to task management and serialization so what we are experiencing in a CMS environment doesn¹t fit what we had anticipated. Our test was conducted on a

VM - Network best practices

2008-05-08 Thread Gary M. Dennis
We need to put together something approaching a production network environment for Windows® under z/VM testing. We don't believe a 500 seat environment would generate any more network traffic or for that matter be any more complex than the network definitions for a z/VM Linux server colony. Has a

Re: Question about z/VM...

2008-04-10 Thread Gary M. Dennis
EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Gary M. Dennis wrote: > | > | Our experience with z/VOS indicates that it is possible to run Intel > | binaries efficiently on System z. However, this efficiency is not > possible > | with emul

Re: Question about z/VM...

2008-04-10 Thread Gary M. Dennis
On 4/10/08 10:02 AM, "David Boyes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> You cannot run Intel binaries efficiently on System z hardware. You can run >> Windows applications based on the portable subset of .NET (using Mono) or >> applications which you have source code and can recompile for System z >> h

Re: z/VM - Lightweight specific purpose file system

2008-03-27 Thread Gary M. Dennis
On 3/26/08 5:05 PM, "Dave Wade" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The existing licenses already allow running in a virtual environment and > don't specify what chips etc that could be. They could change future > licenses, perhaps, but MS licenses don't work like Mainframe Licenses and it > would be har

Re: z/VM - Lightweight specific purpose file system

2008-03-26 Thread Gary M. Dennis
Early in the development cycle, we had both QEMU and Bochs running on z/System version of Redhat (CentOS 5.4). The "Name two movie stars and a dog" joke applied to both emulators running in this environment. We concluded early on that we had to get rid of Linux and the emulation layer. Both would

Re: z/VM - Lightweight specific purpose file system

2008-03-25 Thread Gary M. Dennis
ephen Frazier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Are you attempting to write a windows emulator that runs under VM? > > Looking at your companies web site it looks like you mostly sell products that > run under z/OS. > > If you can do this there will be a lot of i

Re: z/VM - Lightweight specific purpose file system

2008-03-25 Thread Gary M. Dennis
t; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ummm, I may have missed something, but since when can you run Windows on > an IBM mainframe? > > Peter > > -Original Message- > From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Gary M. Dennis

Re: z/VM - Lightweight specific purpose file system

2008-03-25 Thread Gary M. Dennis
e: > On Tuesday, 03/25/2008 at 04:26 EDT, "Gary M. Dennis" > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Is anyone aware of a VM open source file system port with some of the >> characteristics listed below. Such a system might enable us to add the >> functional

z/VM - Lightweight specific purpose file system

2008-03-25 Thread Gary M. Dennis
We need a lightweight file system to support z/VM i86 guest operating systems. A high speed garbage can of sorts. Is anyone aware of a VM open source file system port with some of the characteristics listed below. Such a system might enable us to add the functionality needed to support these guest