IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS Version 7.5.12(.1) Release Notes

Please find information about new functions here.

The installation package for maintenance level 7.5.12 has been withdrawn from FixCentral. If you have already downloaded that package, please do NOT install it but take the package for maintenance level 7.5.12.2 (Accelerator on IIAS) or 7.5.12.3 (Accelerator on IBMZ) to proceed with your upgrade.

• Accelerator on IIAS-specific considerations

  If you plan to install or upgrade IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator, please contact IBM support by opening a pro-active support case and specify both the current and the target Accelerator maintenance level.
  For an upgrade we would like you to create an Appliance trace and to upload it together with the Transfer log to the support case for an offline health check of the system.

  Note:
  Before you transfer the upgrade package to the accelerator, we strongly recommend to have IBM support change the value of configuration parameter APUPGRADE_COMMAND_EXECUTION_TIMEOUT to 30 minutes (unless this hasn't been done already). For further information on this recommendation read the information in APAR PH55926.

  Important remarks concerning upgrades to 7.5.10 or later:

  • Do not mark the check box 'Skip firmware and update only accelerator components (faster)' in the 'Apply Software version' window in Data Studio!
    An "essential" upgrade is no longer supported with upgrades to 7.5.10 or later.
  • Upgrades to 7.5.10 or later in difference to updates towards previous maintenance levels
    • Can include the update of firmware of Flash Storage Nodes (FSN).
      This will be noted in the Transfer Log. An update of the FSN firmware will take 2+ hours. The start of this update is accompanied by the occurrence of message
      "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss PlatformServicesPostinstaller.postinstall:Now performing firmware update and configuration of fsn components..." in the 'Installation log'. During the firmware update there won't be any further notifications in the 'Installation log'.
    • Will include a health check of the FSNs.
      This can result in detection of FSN-related issues and subsequent prevention of the upgrade to the new Accelerator maintenance level. The resolution of such a situation can require hardware maintenance which would break the maintenance window scheduled for the upgrade. A preventive health check of the FSNs can be arranged as part of the pro-active case indicating the upgrade to IBM support.

   

  The steps to be performed for an upgrade depend on your current maintenance level of the accelerator:

  Current Accelerator V7 maintenance level	Upgrade to 7.5.12.x - required steps	Elapse time needed for applying (*) the software (Ballpark estimation)
  7.5.12	Perform a full upgrade to maintenance level 7.5.12.2.	2.5 h (when replication and accelerators are stopped)
  7.5.11.x   or 7.5.10.x   or 7.5.9.x   or 7.5.8.x   or 7.5.7.x	Perform a full upgrade to maintenance level 7.5.12.x.	5 h (when replication and accelerators are stopped)
  7.5.6.x   or 7.5.5.x   or 7.5.4.x   or 7.5.3      or 7.5.2.x   or 7.5.1	The upgrade consists of two steps: Step 1: Perform a full upgrade to maintenance level 7.5.7.1. This step will migrate the IDAA from docker to podman and is mandatory. Step 2: Perform a full upgrade to 7.5.12.x.	1 day

  (*) The time required for downloading the upgrade packages and subsequent transfer to the Accelerator is not included.
• Accelerator on Z-specific considerations
  • Planning the installation or upgrade (Feb 21, 2024)

    If you plan to install or upgrade IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator or if you plan a HW-related action such as Power-On/Reset or DASD-migration in context of GDPS, please contact IBM support by opening a pro-active support case.
    For an upgrade we would like to know

    • What is your current Accelerator maintenance level and the one you want to upgrade to?
    • What is the model type number and the MCL level of the IBM Z hardware hosting the Accelerator to be upgraded?
    • Are you using GDPS for the IBM Z hardware hosting the Accelerator?
    • Are you planning actions on the IBM Z hardware in parallel with the upgrade, such as
      • Upgrade of the MCL; if yes, please specify the target MCL level.
      • DASD migration
      • Power On / Reset (POR).
    Please upload your the current json configuration file to the support case.
  • Support of NVMEs
    • Adaptation of the JSON configuration file

      Using local NVMe storage as transient storage for temporary files is highly recommended for large multi-node Accelerator deployments to improve performance and stability.
      The exploitation requires adaptation of the JSON configuration file:

      • The new keyword “transient_storage”:”NVMe” must be set in all the “runtime_environments” sections.
        If specified, all available NVMe devices within a LinuxONE system (LinuxONE local storage) are used as temporary storage.
      • For use of NVMes, the parameter “temp_working_space” must be removed from the JSON configuration file.
    • Required MCL level

      The use of NMVEs requires an appropriate MCL level. We recommend customer to update to Bundle S85 (for IBM z15) or Bundle S27 (for IBM z16) or later.

  • OSA Express 7s or 6s cards

    When using an OSA Express 7s or 6s card in shared mode, the installation of D41C Bundle s80a (z15) or D51C Bundle s22a (z16) could lead to connectivity problems between Db2 for z/OS LPAR and the accelerator LPAR residing on the same mainframe server. Shared mode means that the network traffic does not go to a switch.
    Recommendation: If you are running a layer 2 host to a layer 3 host and using a shared OSA adapter with the OSA doing the internal routing between the LPARs, we recommend customer to update to Bundle S84a or Bundle S27 (or later) accordingly.
    Note: There won't be a connectivity problem if the OSA card is shared but the internal path is not used, meaning: the network traffic is routed by an external switch.

  • Using RoCE cards for inter-node communication in accelerator multi-node clusters (Feb 21, 2024)

    Are you running accelerator multi-node clusters and using RoCE cards for inter-node communication? (Feb 21, 2024) If the answer is Yes and if the clusters are hosted on IBM z15™ or IBM LinuxONE™ III hardware which is operated in DPM mode, please be aware of the following:

    • We strongly recommend to upgrade your MCL to Bundle S85 (available since Feb 5, 2024).
      Without the mentioned MCL level, a Power On/Reset action on your hardware will lead to a change of the FIDs of the RoCE cards upon Power On. Subsequently a manual adaptation of the RoCE-FIDs in your json configuration file would become necessary to make the accelerator multi-node cluster work again. For more information, please see PH59572.
    • After Power On, the RoCE cards will be in status STOPPED. A manual activation using HMC/DPM will be required.
      This need goes back to an architectural limitation of the IBM z15 environment.
  • Installation/upgrade issue occurring in context of an MCL-upgrade

    Customer who performed an MCL upgrade on a LinuxONE III system have reported that the installation of the Accelerator could not be completed as the Admin UI screens did not show up with buttons. For more information, please see APAR PH59109.

• Mandatory settings for the setup of Integrated Synchronization (published with 7.5.6)
  • Excluding suspended tables from accelerated queries

    The administrator must grant the following privileges to the Db2 for z/OS user ID having been specified during enabling of the subsystem for replication using IBM Integrated Synchronization:

    • EXECUTE on the SYSPROC.ACCEL_SET_TABLES_ACCELERATION stored procedure
    • RACF ACCESS(READ) on the data set that contains the AQTENV file in the started task procedure of the Workload Manager (WLM) environment
    • RACF ACCESS(READ) on the data set that contains the AQTDEF6 file in the started task procedure of the Workload Manager (WLM) environment
    • Define an OMVS segment in the Resource Access Control Facility (RACF)

  • Support of schema changes (Add/Alter column)
    • If the schema change affects columns of the type TIMESTAMP, you must also install the PTF UI73158 for Db2 for z/OS (APAR PH31772)
    • The Db2 for z/OS user you specified when you enabled IBM Integrated Synchronization must have the following additional privileges:
      • SELECT privilege on SYSIBM.SYSTABLES, SYSIBM.SYSCOLUMNS
      • SELECT, UPDATE privilege on SYSIBM.SYSACCELERATEDTABLES

Click here for the list of APARs having been fixed.

• Queries

  • An SQL statement that contains a CAST on a column with the time data type as a character data type may return with colon delimiters instead of dot delimiters once after a table is loaded.

    Example: For the following query "SELECT cast(c_time as char(8)) from T1": On Db2 12 for z/OS the value returned is "13.10.00" as a character string. On the accelerator the value returned is "13:10:00" as a character string. This occurs only once after a table is loaded.

    Fixed

The SYSPROC.ACCEL_LOAD_TABLES stored procedure behaves differently if automatic change detection is enabled.
Before version 7.1.7, a load job with a setting of detectChanges=“DATA” sometimes did not capture the changes in all partitions if the lock mode NONE had been used for the previous load.
This was fixed with version 7.1.7.

The new behavior:
If you use lock mode NONE and detectChanges=“DATA”,

• it can happen that more changes are detected than are transferred to the accelerator. This is caused by the SKIP LOCKED DATA option, which is used implicitly by the Db2 Unload Utility. If parts of the data were locked by other processes, then this data is ignored and not unloaded to the accelerator.

• therefore, a partition in an accelerator-shadow table is always fully reloaded to ensure that all changes are finally transferred. A reload is started even if the partition had no further changes since then.

Starting with 7.5.7 the appliance database settings have been improved to increase the performance of queries. While most queries benefit from the change, some queries might face a performance decline. If you were affected, contact IBM support for a revert of the changed settings in a remote maintenance session.

General recommendations

• Under a high system load, the accelerator might appear slow or run into timeouts.

  Recommendation: Do not run more than 30 load threads in parallel.

Queries

• A query running during a partial reload of an incrementally updated table might be unable to access the new partitions.

  Recommendation: Rerun the query after the partial reload has finished.

• A query referencing several tables using union all views could run slower than V5.
  Example use cases are when union all views are used for collecting data from multiple branch offices and each branch-office has a schema-identical table that your are all referencing in a single query.

  Recommendation: Contact IBM support for assistance.

Loading tables

• After running the REORG utility in Db2 12 for z/OS,  reloads might be wrongly recommended for partitions that have already been loaded on the accelerator.

  Recommendation: To receive correct reload recommendations, do not use interactive load recommendations and batch job change detection at the same time.

Incremental updates

• CDC-based replication: The time needed to reload a set of incrementally updated tables increases as well as the replication latency.

  Recommendation: Pause after each reload, as this allows the system to come back to normal throughput rates and latency levels.
  As an alternative: use Integrated Synchronization based replication.

Monitoring

• The values of the monitoring counter Q8STTMUD are too high, for example 0.18E+20.

  Recommendation: Ignore the high value. It will be corrected during the next collection of statistics.

• The monitoring values of the Q8STCQL, Q8STCQLS, and Q8STQUEW metrics might be displayed incorrectly.

Accelerator Studio GUI

• "Transfer certificates" for "Encryption of Data in Motion" in DataStudio based GUI only allows file extension ".crt" for certificate transfers, not ".p12".

  Recommendation: When transferring a certificate for "Encryption of Data in Motion", then locate the certificate file on your client and change the extension from ".p12" to ".crt". The certificate file will then become visible in the available certificates box of the GUI, so that you can transfer it.

Stored Procedure ACCEL_GET_TABLES INFO (Feb 26, 2024)

• The fields AccessCount and LastAccessTimeStamp for an accelerator-shadow table are updated even without running a query on that table. For more information, please see APAR PH59232.

High Performance Storage Saver (Feb 21, 2024)

• Be aware of the following issues that are new with Accelerator maintenance level 7.5.12(.1):
  • PH58964
  • PH58965

Miscellaneous

• Under a very high system load caused by the parallel execution of various operations, such as 'Add Tables', 'Remove Tables', and 'Alter Keys', the accelerator might restart unexpectedly, leading to the abortion of running tasks or queries.
  Symptoms are aborted tasks, lock timeout exceptions, or messages with SQL code -911, SQLSTATE=40001, and rc=68.

  Recommendation: Reduce the task diversity of parallel jobs if you process large table sets with more than 100 tables. For example, do not run 'Alter Keys', 'Add Tables', and 'Remove Tables' operations at the same time. Reduce this to 'Alter Keys' and 'Add Tables' jobs or any other combination of just two different tasks.
  If a query failed, rerun the query.

• When a date literal in a LOCAL date format DD/MM/YYYY or YYYYMMDD is CAST as a CHAR or VARCHAR, the result is not the local date format but rather ISO.
  For example: CAST(DATE('22/11/2018') AS CHAR(10)) will return 2018-11-22 instead of '22/11/2018'.

  Recommendation: None