Replacing EADM: what stays the same and what changes with zPulse Disk

Replacing EADM with zPulse means moving to zPulse Disk, the module that takes over from EADM: it reads your RMF and CMF reports and splits DASD response time into IOSQ, pending, disconnect and connect time. What changes is the base around it: studies you can compare, a daily run with a DASD mail, an I/O Topology Flow and 25 tools.

This article is for storage engineers and capacity planners who know EADM and do not yet know zPulse. It covers what stays the same, what is new, what happens to your ControlCenter tools, what to prepare, and who helps with the move.

What EADM is, and what replaces it

EADM (Easy Analyze Disk Mainframe) is the Technical Storage tool that profiled DASD performance from RMF and CMF reports. It worked by LPAR or for a whole sysplex, and mailed its results.

zPulse is the Technical Storage application that reads RMF and CMF reports, DCOLLECT extracts, tape catalogues and VEHSTATS files. It runs on your own server.

zPulse Disk is the zPulse module for I/O and storage-system performance. It is the module that takes over from EADM, and its DCOLLECT screens cover the space side. No screen-by-screen parity list is published: the sections below describe what zPulse Disk does, not a one-to-one copy of EADM.

What stays the same

The input and the logic do not change. You still work from the printed RMF Direct Access Device Activity report, or the CMF DASD activity report. You still read response time as a sum of four parts, by interval, by LPAR and by volume.

The same filters are there: LPAR, volume serial, storage group and LCU, with * wildcards. Averages by period are kept per LCU, storage group, volume and LPAR. The worst volumes are ranked by I/O rate, response time and each component.

What is new in zPulse

zPulse adds structure around the analysis. The changes fall into three groups.

Studies you can accumulate and compare

A study is one analysis run on one or more report files. It has three modes. SINGLE reads one file. ACCUM adds several files together, for example several days or the LPARs of a sysplex. COMPARE puts two files side by side on a common time axis, to check a day before and after a change.

A disk study can be exported as a PDF report of its charts, with the worst-volume tables. Each chart also has a CSV export.

A daily run and a DASD mail with history

A scheduled study is a study that zPulse runs every day, at a time you choose, on the files in a source folder. It writes its result files to a report folder and can send a DASD mail.

The DASD mail shows the response time components and the I/O rate by period, a worst-volume table, and sections by LPAR, volume, storage group or LCU. The daily DASD and CPU mails chart up to 60 days of history. The history starts with the first run.

Cache, FICON and topology screens in the same study

The same study reads more pages of your reports. Whether or not you used the equivalent EADM views, you get:

• track and read cache misses, and cache delayed operations;
• front-end and back-end throughput, with block size;
• activity by LCU and FICON channel, for disk and tape;
• HyperPAV use by LCU, and SuperPAV by alias management group;
• DS8000 back-end statistics by class and by rank;
• an I/O Topology Flow from storage group to LCU, SSID, extent pool and rank, which is new in zPulse.

Two screens read RMF reports only and stay empty for CMF files: zHyperLink, and electricity consumption of the I/O.

What happens to your ControlCenter tools

Many TS ControlCenter tools used with EADM are now zPulse tools. zPulse has 25 tools in all. These come from the EADM family:

• TS Channel FICON Analyzer and TS FICON Monitoring, for channel use;
• TS SSID Analyser, TS Async Cache and TS CFW Utilization, for cache;
• TS LCU SSID Association and TS Open Exchange, for LCUs and channels;
• TS Volume DataSharing, for the list of online volumes;
• TS AddInfo, TS BigData Analyze and TS DCOLLECT Analyzer, for the files a scheduled study writes;
• TS Cleaner, to prepare a report before a study.

Some tools read files that EADM also produced, such as the channel CSV or the Compare_Analysis file. A scheduled study in zPulse writes the same kinds of files, so these tools do not depend on EADM. Not every ControlCenter tool has a zPulse version. The tools page lists each tool, its origin and the file it reads.

What to prepare before you switch

zPulse runs on a server you control. Plan these points before the first study:

1. Reports. RMF or CMF reports as text files, the ones you already produce for EADM. Archives in .zip or .rar are accepted.
2. A Windows server. zPulse installs with a Windows setup program and runs as a Windows service, which scheduled studies need.
3. PostgreSQL. Install it before zPulse. The first-start assistant of the desktop application connects to it.
4. Licence. Activation is offline and tied to one machine: you send a request code and receive an activation code.
5. Mail. The daily mails go through your own SMTP server.
6. DCOLLECT extract. Only if you want the space screens. zPulse reads a DCOLLECT extract, not the raw DCOLLECT output; ask us for the extraction procedure.

You then work in the desktop application or in a browser on the server. Nothing is installed on z/OS.

How the transition works, and who helps

There is no public screen-by-screen list that maps every EADM view to zPulse. The honest answer is a walkthrough: the EADM analyses you rely on are in zPulse Disk, and a Technical Storage expert can show you where each one sits.

One simple way to start: pick a few days of reports you know well. Run them as an ACCUM study, then compare the results with what you read in EADM. Set up the scheduled study and the DASD mail once you trust the numbers.

For timing, planning and help with the move, see our expertise or contact us.

How zPulse reads your disk data

zPulse Disk reads the printed RMF and CMF reports as text files: device activity, cache, I/O queuing, channel path and ESS statistics. It does not read raw SMF records, and nothing is installed on z/OS. Studies run on your own server, and the time they take depends on file size. See the zPulse overview for the Tape, CPU and Space modules.

The simplest way to see the change is on your own data: a free study runs your RMF or CMF reports through zPulse Disk, and a Technical Storage expert walks you through the screens that replace the ones you use in EADM.