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With Strobe, IT departments can pinpoint application inefficiencies that cause excessive CPU consumption and reduce hardware and software costs while increasing customer satisfaction. Key Features and Benefits of Mainframe Application Performance Management Improve user code efficiency, transaction response time and throughput. Locate and improve resource-consumptive database calls. Quickly pinpoint the source of application inefficiencies. Identify SQL statements and DB2 system services that cause excessive CPU time or wait time. Receive detailed DB2 tuning information including catalog statistics and the number of GET PAGE requests for each SQL statement. Enable new users to be more productive with a graphical interface for taking measurements and detecting mainframe application performance problems. Launch Strobe directly from BMC’s MainView or Cost Analyzer for zEnterprise to quickly and easily identify tuning opportunities that will have the greatest impact on monthly software licensing costs Reduce the Complexity of Mainframe Application Performance Management Strobe is the premier technology for managing mainframe application performance in complex environments. It measures the activity of both online and batch-processing applications in single and multiple system environments, detailing where and how time is spent during an application’s execution. Strobe can save hours of investigation by revealing program statements that consume excessive CPU resources, the percentage of CPU time used within modules and control sections, display procedure names and statement numbers, and provide the complete line of source code. With Strobe analysis you can identify a number of I/O problems including inefficient DB2 SQL statements. Compuware iStrobe extends the benefits of Strobe with an easy-to-use, browser-based graphical user interface. iStrobe identifies the access path used by the SQL statement as well as the relevant catalog statistics, providing all the data needed to improve the application’s performance for both online and batch-processing applications. Reduce Time and Resources Wasted in War Rooms Too much time and too many resources are being wasted in “war rooms” where it may take many hours or days to find the root cause of a critical performance problem. Strobe quickly and easily pinpoints the root cause of performance problems even in complex environments with multiple languages, databases or teleprocessing subsystems, putting an end to finger-pointing. Enable the Transitioning Mainframe Workforce As experienced IT staff transition into retirement and new inexperienced employees come on board, a large amount of knowledge will be lost. Strobe provides “the answer” up front, supplying the precise, in-depth application performance data needed to locate and eliminate sources of excessive resource demand. Built-in intelligence reduces the reliance on human expertise and experience. Integration with Compuware’s modernized mainframe development environment, the Eclipse-based Compuware Workbench, means you can also initiate Strobe measurements for both active and future application instances from within a modern open development environment. Analyze Which Mainframe Application Performance Problems to Fix Strobe presents a detailed analysis of the most important tuning opportunities found. It quickly identifies performance problems that are the simplest to fix as well as the top five opportunities in major categories such as COBOL, DB2, Language Environment and file access. Strobe reports also contain data from SMF and RMF. Using the Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT), reports can easily be crafted to show when a system is the busiest and what jobs run at this time. Measuring and Reporting on Mainframe Application Performance Management (APM) Success Strobe provides trend and summary reports for all major subsystem components, including batch, CICS, DB2 and IMS. Performance data can be stored in a Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle or DB2 database. Using the Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT), you can either view the supplied reports or easily craft new custom reports to view your data from a variety of perspectives. This allows you to follow trends, identify the best areas for tuning efforts, and isolate response time and CPU consumption problems. Proactively Determine What and When to Measure Compuware AutoStrobe boosts productivity and increases the flexibility of Strobe and iStrobe by making the measurement process predictable and repeatable. You can create reusable measurement requests and schedule them to run at regular intervals. In addition, AutoStrobe can proactively initiate a Strobe measurement when abnormal behavior occurs in a program. Third-party monitors or other custom applications can also initiate a Strobe measurement using the Strobe applications programming interface (API). AutoStrobe also includes Global Batch Monitoring, a feature that automates the detection of performance problems by using a rolling average of CPU consumption and elapsed time metrics. AutoStrobe automatically measures any job step that exceeds acceptable thresholds, while Global Batch Monitoring automatically sets CPU and elapsed time thresholds based on performance data from previous executions. A similar function for CICS online transactions monitors transaction performance and alert you to any performance issues before they become critical. Tight Integration with BMC’s Workload Management Solutions Mainframe workloads are growing significantly as organizations embrace mobile apps, Big Data analytics, IoT and other technologies. These technologies all place greater demands on mainframe-resident applications, data and transaction/compute processing power. New capabilities offered on the newly debuted IBM z13—including Java-enabled specialty processors—are also likely to attract new workloads. This workload growth drives up the Monthly License Charge (MLC). To help customers minimize their MLCs, Strobe is tightly integrated with industry-leading products from BMC. The integration between these solutions enables customers to quickly and easily identify tuning opportunities that will have the greatest impact on their monthly software licensing costs by applying BMC Cost Analyzer’s visual mapping to the detailed batch and transaction information provided by Compuware Strobe. These opportunities can include moving workloads to non-peak periods, running IBM subsystems on fewer LPARs, and capping LPAR utilization. The integration also makes cost management easier for mainframe operations staff by allowing them to invoke Strobe data collection directly from BMC MainView. Further information can be found here. Deep-dive Java Performance Analysis Strobe seamlessly integrates with Topaz for Java Performance giving staff the ability to take comprehensive measurements of their whole Java environment. Strobe delivers valuable insight about Java Virtual Machine (JVM) jobs and specialty processor usage, while Topaz for Java Performance gives an inside view of the JVM for targeted tuning of Java programs. Strobe Insight – New Analytics, Tuning Capabilities and a Rolling 4-Hour Average Report Strobe for Deep Mainframe Application Performance Analysis Credit Suisse Share Best Practices Norbert Schorm, Head of Application Performance Management (APM) at Credit Suisse, highlights best practices for maximizing mainframe application performance management (APM) while keeping costs at a minimum. 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