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Hungry Systems with Expensive Tastes
Whilst disk problems are not unique and could strike at any moment, they don’t strike without good reason. Without knowing what the reasons are, Managers are forced to make difficult and expensive disk decisions that could create a big dent in their annual budget at the expense of other critical projects. What’s more, if problems that affect disk are left unattended, they can escalate quickly and impact many other areas of system performance so Managers are under even more pressure to now solve a number of issues requiring immediate attention. With no solution to pinpoint the cause, Operators may not know where to begin investigations as there is no apparent chain of events with a root cause evident, only the combined results of multiple problems.
The goal is not to make less use of DASD, after all, it exists to be used, but rather to ensure that all use is best use. If any unnecessary or wasteful use is suspected, the organization responsible must view this as an unnecessary expense. Catching instances of runaway DASD immediately and being able to isolate the problem that caused it for fast resolution are the main objectives of effective disk monitoring. The company that can do this can put an end to their system’s expensive taste for disk.
Calculating the Cost
Potential problems with any system object be it a file, data queue, ASP or spooled file could trigger a situation that will impact DASD resource. The most common are listed below and left unattended, could have the greatest impact on the system. Any solution for monitoring disk should pay particular attention to these areas and alert Managers to any change in their individual size, collective quantity, percentage statistics or status in real-time if they are to minimize impact on disk usage. Doing so will not only put Operators in a pro-active position to manage and respond to DASD threats generally but will also safeguard against the unnecessary expense of avoidable DASD usage.
_ Journal Receivers
_ Temporary Storage
_ ASP
_ Important Files
_ Looping Jobs
Case Study
Company X is a large Facilities Management organization. They are servicing three important, different customers on an i5 550 that are experiencing a number of problems that are impacting disk. The cost of purchasing more disk is an option but would greatly impact their profit for these customer accounts and would not resolve the problems long-term. Their Service Level Agreements are below target for two consecutive months on all three accounts and they face stiff financial penalties as a result. They are struggling to resolve the underlying issues as they are only aware of the result of the problems in the form of escalating DASD use. The table below reveals the true cost that a lack of effective disk monitoring is costing them.
The profit margins of Company X greatly depend on their ability to deliver agreed levels of service to customers 24/7 without resorting to expensive disk additions to combat unforeseen issues. Company X might just as easily be any large organization managing resource for specific groups within the company. In this case, justifying additional resource for these problems becomes a tense negotiation of budgets at best and at worst, a daunting trial of accountability for delayed processing, user inconvenience/unproductive time and other consequential problems that come with a heavy price tag, such as a lack of availability. Effective disk monitoring can provide companies struggling with issues that impact DASD the means to eradicate unnecessary use and solve the root cause of the problems.
Real-Time Insight into Disk, Temporary Storage & ASP’s
Knowing about problems that could impact DASD is the first step to achieving effective disk monitoring. Sudden, unexplained temporary storage increases are a good example of how difficult it is to identify the root cause of problems without a specialist solution in place. Typically, Managers would notice a leap in temporary storage and be left with little option but to carry out a thorough investigation of each job in each subsystem, submitted by each user. The checking of hundreds and hundreds of jobs to identify which one was problematic is a marathon task that few Managers have the time to carry out once, let alone on a regular basis.
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