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MAINFRAME PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

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Mainframe Performance Improvement

Table of Contents
Mainframe Performance Challenges 3
Mainframe Performance Improvement 3
High-Performance In-Memory Technology 4
Balancing Cost Savings With Performance 5
IT Business Intelligence 6
Conclusion 7
The Next Step 7
About Us 7

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Mainframe Performance Improvement

Mainframe Performance Challenges

Today most CIOs, CTOs and IT managers are aware of the impact of digital transformation
(DX) on their respective businesses and IT organizations. Disruptive technologies like
mobile, big data, business analytics, cloud (computing and storage), digital payment, and
more recently the algorithmic economy and the Internet of Things (IoT), are making their
impacts felt. Meanwhile, in a growing economy, increases in expected business workloads
are also making their impacts felt through increased online transactions, web requests,
mobile requests, batch jobs, ad hoc queries, data warehousing analysis, utility jobs, and
Db2 commands, etc.

In many cases the impact that is being felt is a perceived decrease in system performance -
slower running applications, less responsive databases and a general erosion of computing
response times, as systems cope with the enormous increases in workload demands being
piled upon them.
Is this an indictment of the value or capability of the mainframe as a business computing
platform? Hardly. However, business and IT management consulting firms will be happy
to blame the mainframe platform itself, which is not in and of itself a surprise, since they
will surely benefit financially if you are convinced that this is the case. The truth is that any
platform being crushed by constantly increasing demands is going to suffer a similar fate.
The solution is to solve the performance problem, not to solve the platform.

Mainframe Performance Improvement

The mainframe is widely regarded as the best platform on the planet for running large-scale
transaction processing because that is what it was designed for. No other platform can
compete with the throughput performance of the mainframe. But workloads are increasing
year-by-year, and the mainframe needs to keep pace.
Before
There are several ways to improve mainframe performance—the most
popular being a systems upgrade—meaning an upgrade to a newer
model mainframe (for example, from a zEnterprise 196 to a z14 mainframe
system), or adding processors and memory to an existing system. These
MSU

can be costly solutions, but frankly need to be done from time to time
in a growing business environment. But there are techniques that can
be used to augment the upgrade cycle, and to reduce the frequency of
upgrades—resulting in improved performance at a lower cost.

Are there really techniques that improve the performance of a mainframe

processor or its memory or buses? No. However, by optimizing
applications, they can use far fewer system resources (I/O and CPU),
allowing them to run faster, and potentially present a smaller impact
Figure 1: Increased resource demand
on operational cost. This virtually improves the performance of the
necessitating upgrades
application. And by optimizing several applications (even in several
different ways), there can be a significant and measurable system-wide
performance improvement. Similarly, if several database applications are optimized, there
will be an apparent (and measurable) database performance improvement—even though
the database has not been changed in any way.

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Mainframe Performance Improvement

High-Performance In-Memory Technology

In-memory technology augments your DBMS and its buffering facilities. The reference data that is used most often by your
applications—a very small amount of data—is copied from the DBMS into dataspace resident high-performance in-memory
tables, where it is accessed using a simple and tight API. To get the most out of in-memory technology, you must identify
applications that perform repetitive accesses (thousands, millions) of read-only reference data—and you must identify that data.

The reason is that a small amount of data is responsible the most accesses
to your databases, and if you can replace those calls with in-memory
calls—eliminating I/O, CPU and database overhead—that can make a
significant difference in overall performance of your mainframe system.

You may think that buffering is enough in-memory technology, but you
can obtain a far higher performance benefit from high-performance in-
memory technology. And the key to that is the difference in code path
between this technology and your database buffers. Figure 3 shows the
difference—a typical DBMS call to buffered data consumes from 10,000
Figure 2: 20% of data is responsible for
to 100,000 machine cycles, whereas a call to data contained in a high-
80% of data access
performance in-memory table consumes about 400 machine cycles.

Calling Application

SSAS RDS DM BM VSAM

Med Mgr

DASD

BSDS Logs SQL Parse SQL Opt Rec Map Index Mgr DSM Buffer Pools LRW IRLM

tableBASE
tableBASE Driver

Figure 3: A shorter path to your data

It is important to know that this technology does not replace

the database—it merely augments it. Your database does
not change in any way, and it remains one of your most
important assets.
CPU t I/O
Tests and comparisons have been completed by both
independent third-party testing organizations, and
DataKinetics customer IT organizations using tableBASE
high-performance in-memory technology. In all cases,
systems augmented using tableBASE allow data to be
CPU Usage Elapsed Time I/O Consumption
accessed by applications at a rate considerably superior
to any other technique. Actual customer systems (using Without in-memory technology With in-memory technology
Db2, Db2 buffers augmented by tableBASE) out-perform
systems employing only Db2 + Db2 buffer optimization by
Figure 4: Improved mainframe performance
a wide margin: up to 3000% faster.

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Mainframe Performance Improvement

IT Business Intelligence
IT organizations collect tremendous amounts of data about their own computing resources every day—both mainframe,
midrange servers locally, or in third-party datacenters. So much data is collected, that you could call it their own “IT Big
Data.” And with the right toolsets, this IT data can be used to reduce the cost of batch running on your mainframe, and can
help identify low-priority batch candidates to offload for running on other platforms.

IT business intelligence identifies lower-priority batch workloads that are potential candidates for reprioritization, re-
platforming or even elimination. This can directly contribute to improved performance, especially during peak and mission-
critical workloads (see Figure 7).

Figure 7: A low-priority batch workload contributes to the peak workload of the week

IT business intelligence can also show which departments are using mainframe resources, and how much that is costing.
This information can further help to re-prioritize batch processing based on the new-found transparency of departmental
spending patterns.
i Mips per calendar Date and calendar TimeOfDay by BusinessArea
$100,000

$90,000

$80,000

$70,000
1,000

$60,000
Cost per month
Mips

$50,000

$40,000
500
$30,000

$20,000

$10,000

0 $0
0

4
6

4
6
2

8
20

20
22

22
10

14
16

10

14
16
12

18

12

18

Cost per month Retail Banking Internal Finance Capital Markets

Figure 8: Business information on mainframe resource usage per organizational unit

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Mainframe Performance Improvement

Conclusion
Before After
These solutions address existing system performance challenges with
little or no changes to existing hardware, databases or applications.
They are low-risk and budget-friendly; independently, they provide good
performance improvement, but together they provide very significant

MSU
improvements. They can help to decrease the frequency of your system
upgrades. They also provide short-term ROI, coupled with long-term cost
savings and improved efficiency, enabling improved strategic business
flexibility. Improved performance while maintaining cost control—just
the prescription needed for today’s over-taxed mainframe systems.

The Next Step

To see how much of an impact these unique performance optimization
solutions would have on your business, a “proof of concept” trial can Figure 9: Controlled resource demand
be arranged. The steps of the trial would include identifying a specific reducing need for upgrades
problem area, applying a solution to it, measuring the effectiveness, and
then assessing the overall cost impact.

Your organization and the Professional Services staff from DataKinetics will collaborate to outline a high-level project plan
and approach that will review applicable environments, infrastructure, application code, etc., and help implement the proof of
concept. We will work with you to provide a proposal based on your current IT plan. Contact DataKinetics for more information.

About Us
As the global leader in Data Performance and Optimization Solutions, the world’s largest banks, credit card, brokerage,
insurance, healthcare, retail and telecommunication organizations rely on DataKinetics to dramatically improve their data
throughput and processing.

Our comprehensive, world-renowned suite of solutions enables Fortune 500 companies to:

• Process over a billion mission-critical transactions every day

• Accelerate application processing by up to 98%
• Seamlessly integrate data on mainframe and distributed systems
• Enable increased control and flexibility in sub-capacity pricing and R4H soft capping environments

© DataKinetics Ltd., 2023. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the express written permission of DataKinetics Ltd.
DataKinetics and tableBASE are registered trademarks of DataKinetics Ltd. Db2 and z/OS are registered trademarks of IBM Corporation. All other trademarks,
registered trademarks, product names, and company names and/or logos cited herein, if any, are the property of their respective holders.

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