For mainframe administrators

Who need to monitor IT system(s) comprehensively and automatically for the detection of early-stage issues and the prediction of anomalies or resource exhaustion

Our Z-RAYS software is the primary tool supporting administrator for exhaustive and coherent view and alerting if anything happens thanks to smart machine-data collection and machine learning algorithm

That enables the automation of the mainframe system monitoring process, as well as integrates with leading analytics and monitoring platforms of the IT environment as a whole

Our offer could be implemented easy way on-premise or SaaS model and characterized by:

• precise data in real-time and in an exact format,
• openness to change and integration with other tools,
• alerting using AI algorithms,
• easy to install and operate.

Z-RAYS is a software tool that makes z/OS performance data available, understandable, and presentable or exportable. Based on existing infrastructure for accessing machine data on z/OS systems, the tool gathers data from multiple sources, including RMF Records, SMF, Syslog, Security Log, and SQLs. As a result, the tool provides data for top analytics platforms, streaming it in almost real-time.

Thanks to Z-RAYS, you can stream that data in near real-time, sending it to multiple destinations in different formats for different consumers and allow IT operations to analyze and manage operating systems, databases, and mainframe other environments.

The modern admin monitoring Z-RAYS-console provides comprehensive performance and the availability view makes administrators’ life easier, enabling professional action to be taken based on figures:

• detecting mainframe performance problems across multiple subsystems,
• allowing computer operations personnel to isolate quickly and take action on these problems,
• status tracking and prediction for better resource allocation, utilization, or planning.

If you operate a large infrastructure and have organizational or technical challenges due to the increasing complexity of systems producing too much data to analyze, Z-RAYS is the solution. Z-RAYS tools address the pain of dynamic workload, old reporting processes, manual analytics, and the lack of experts.

Therefore, this offer is suitable for companies that struggle with staff shortages and have the challenge of problem detection but need to improve system performance quickly, combined with the challenge of maintenance costs.

Moreover, this offer is aimed at companies who:

• are developing a modern monitoring operation center and implement holistic umbrella monitoring,
• are planning a migration.

Automated, Smart Monitoring

• The AI engine detects issues at an early stage, predicts anomalies or resource exhaustion, and provides an alert – it is much more than typical ordinary messages.
• Thanks to smart rules, alarms, indicators, and our general embedded expert knowledge, daily professionalism is automated and simply more qualitative.
• Real-time machine data in-take and on-line observability overcome static information post factum.

Integration with Analytical Platforms

The central concept of Z-RAYS is the established collaboration with Elastic Stack, Dynatrace, Strobe and other leading monitoring tools. This way, Z-RAYS amplifies:

• • the power of the best analytical tools;
  • umbrella (holistic) monitoring in an enterprise, delivering information to central cockpit and the center of monitoring;
  • the connection of two worlds: mainframe and distributed environments;
  • the customizable output by JSON format.

Information Exploration and Effectiveness of Monitoring

Z-RAYS offers a modern graphical user web-based interface based on Kibana/Elasticsearch or Dynatrace, which makes a substantial difference compared to 3270-standard or windows style.

• • Visibility sorted, cleaned, grueling metrics across OS, DB2, WAS, CICS (and more) in relation in one place, instead of unselected information scattered around the modules.
  • The data are available in a single Operational Cockpit, with dexterous navigation Top-to-Bottom (into low-level dashboards for various areas), presenting indicators and charts, including sophisticated drill-down and filter-out mechanism.
  • The front-end is customizable, and the user can easily fit it to the needs, defining SLO, SLI or information structure for supporting advanced administrator or junior operator.

Easy to Operate

• Z-RAYS is a ready-to-use, user-friendly solution, and thanks to well-selected metrics, predefined dashboards, and an intuitive interface, there is no need to invest additional time and money in learning for the operation team. Moreover, implementation takes 2-4 hours.
• The software optimizes resource usage without overhead for the monitoring systems (fully utilized zIIP processors) and is not invasive to the system.
• The tool purely focuses on monitoring and doesn’t capture areas like system configuration setup or transaction scheduling. This way, the software is “light” and does not require significant permissions.

Z-RAYS significantly automates the monitoring, eliminating much manual work, achieving time reduction to identify incidents’ causes. It delivers alerts with exceptions and anomalies or resources exhaustion prediction.
Better monitoring means reducing MSU and related processing computer’s work cost caused real money-saving. The tool protects your organization to avoid outages’ risk and associated losses. Moreover, it provides information for proper resource planning.

Z- RAYS –  Mainframe Systems Monitoring

The subject of the Project

The subject of the Z-RAYS project is to create an intelligent solution for efficient and ergonomic monitoring of the mainframe environment in real-time in order to optimize the efficiency of IT specialists and improve troubleshooting times during the operation of mainframe systems. Monitoring will be done without significant impact on system performance and significant additional consumption of system resources with the support of Machine Learning algorithms. The project will also provide integration with solutions in the world of open systems.

Project Objective

The project aims to carry out R&D work related to the development of specialized algorithms using machine learning and to implement the results, as well as to raise the technological readiness of the product from TRL 3 to TRL 9.

Project budget: 1.000.000,- PLN

Contribution of the European Funds: 800,000,- PLN

Project implementation: 05.11.2020 – 04.11.2021

Program name

The project is implemented under the Operational Programme Intelligent Development 2014 – 2020, Measure 1.3: R&D works financed with the participation of capital funds (sub-measure 1.3.1): Support for R&D Projects in the preseed phase by proof of concept funds – BRIdge Alpha.