IBM System Management Facility (SMF) is a component of IBM's z/OS for mainframe computers, providing a standardised method for writing out records of activity to a file (or data set to use a z/OS term). SMF provides full "instrumentation" of all baseline activities running on that IBM mainframe operating system, including I/O, network activity, software usage, error conditions, processor utilization, etc.
One of the most prominent components of z/OS that uses SMF is the IBM Resource Measurement Facility (RMF). RMF provides performance and usage instrumentation of resources such as processor, memory, disk, cache, workload, virtual storage, XCF and Coupling Facility. RMF is technically a priced (extra cost) feature of z/OS. BMC sells a competing alternative, CMF.
SMF forms the basis for many monitoring and automation utilities. Each SMF record has a numbered type (e.g. "SMF 120" or "SMF 89"), and installations have great control over how much or how little SMF data to collect. Records written by software other than IBM products generally have a record type of 128 or higher. Some record types have subtypes - for example Type 70 Subtype 1 records are written by RMF to record CPU activity.
Here is a list of the most common SMF record types:
The major record types, especially those created by RMF, continue to evolve at a rapid pace. Each release of z/OS brings new fields. Different processor families and Coupling Facility levels also change the data model.
SMF can record data in two ways:
Both the two ways can be declared for the use, but only one is used at a time in order to have the other as a fallback alternative.
This data is then periodically dumped to sequential files (for example, tape drives) using the IFASMFDP SMF Dump Utility (or IFASMFDL when using log streams). IFASMFDP can also be used to split existing SMF sequential files and copy them to other files. The two dump programs produce the same output, so it does not involve changes in the SMF records elaboration chain, other than changing the JCL with the call of the new dump utility.
SMF data can be collected through IBM Z Operational Log and Data Analytics and IBM Z Anomaly Analytics with Watson. IBM Z Operational Log and Data Analytics collects SMF data, transforms it in a consumable format and then sends the data to third-party enterprise analytics platforms like the Elastic Stack and Splunk, or to the included operational data analysis platform, for further analysis. IBM Z Anomaly Analytics with Watson collects SMF data from multiple IBM Z systems and subsystems, including IBM Db2 for z/OS, IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS and IBM MQ for z/OS, uses historical IBM Z metric and log data to build a model of normal operational behavior, and analyzes real-time operational data through comparison with the model of normal operations to detect and alert IT operations of anomalous behavior.
IBM Z Operational Log and Data Analytics collects SMF data in the following three ways, and IBM Z Anomaly Analytics with Watson collects SMF data in the first two of the following ways:
When SMF is run in the log stream mode, the Common Data Provider in IBM Z Operational Log and Data Analytics and IBM Z Anomaly Analytics with Watson can be configured to collect SMF from the SMF in-memory buffer with the SMF real-time interface.
When SMF is run in the data set recording mode, the Common Data Provider in IBM Z Operational Log and Data Analytics and IBM Z Anomaly Analytics with Watson collect and stream SMF data via a set of SMF user exits.
The System Data Engine of the Common Data Provider in IBM Z Operational Log and Data Analytics can be run stand-alone in batch mode to read SMF data from a data set and then write it to a file. The System Data Engine batch jobs can be created to write SMF data to data sets and send SMF data to the Data Streamer.
SMF data can be analyzed on the following analytics platforms:
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