SYSVIEW Performance Intelligence Reviews

I am mainly the installer, subject-matter expert for my company. So, making sure it is in, working, and available for others to use. It has performed great so far. 

Ultimately, the prevention of money loss for missing SOAs and stuff like that on our systems, if we miss something. 

Anybody has the ability to be able to find something that might be wrong, and look through it.

• Ease of use
• Ability for system diagnostics

System troubleshooting and diagnostics are the biggest thing for us. We need to make sure our system is up and running and at peak performing. Also, it helps us troubleshoot if something does go wrong that we did not happen to see. 

They are already working on improvements. One of them is the operational intelligence, which is a lot of stuff I am trying to learn and work on right now, which SYSVIEW reports to that all the system things which are going on. 

It is good. We do not have any issues with it. I have been able to install and keep up with the latest versions of it without any issues. 

It scales pretty nice. I am running it on more than 60 systems.

Technical support is good, always responsive, pretty quick to get back to me with answers, and/or always willing to help. That is the biggest thing.

In the past, we have used TeamOn.

It was straightforward. I was not there for the initial setup for our system, but I have maintained it since then. So, I have done all the upgrades and maintenance on it. So, it is pretty easy and seamless to put it in. 

We have a global license, so I can't provide much info.

We have looked at using BMC MainView. IBM was also considered.

SYSVIEW is the main one we use. MainView is available on our systems, and it is used as a secondary backup to what might be found in SYSVIEW, or what might not have found. 

In comparison with product of MainView, SYSVIEW is pretty simple, easy to install, and easy to upgrade compared to MainView, as the other product I work with. Every time I need to do something new in MainView, I have to put up a new task and new configuration, so it gets very complicated versus the simplicity of SYSVIEW to do the same thing. 

Just try it. See if you like it or not.

I have to work with other products that are its competition, and so far, SYSVIEW is one of the best out of there. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The response from their technical team is the most important for me. Also, a product that is stable and works

We use it to control everything that's going on in the system. It's a very good tool to use for a system programmer and for a normal programmer.

As a system programmer I can see deep into the system, where nearly everything is at, so it's a very good tool for us to use.

It's quicker to get information, it saves time.

From the demo I attended it looks like all the features I would want are coming.

Very good, no downtime.

It's very good.

I haven't used technical support for SYSVIEW but I have used CA support and it's very good.

We were using SDS from IBM. We switched because SYSVIEW is a better product.

Straightforward.

You have this and you have SDS from IBM. You can compare the two products. We have an agreement with CA so we took SYSVIEW and it's good.

When selecting a vendor it comes down to the price.

I would recommend SYSVIEW. Use it.

SYSVIEW has numerous uses. There are so many different things:

• CICS transactions
• CPU utilizations
• TSO users.

It performs exactly as we have it customized. We have never had a problem with it. It is always well-maintained and it does everything we ask for it to do.

It is easy to navigate through. It has a lot of features and functions to it, so people can do their jobs. 

I never had a problem with it whatsoever. It is 100% always up.

I have never had a problem with it.

Same as always with CA. They are on top of things. I have never had an issue.

It was straightforward. There is really no additional customization from one version to the next. It is really easy. It is not a very difficult product to install and customize. 

I do the installation and the customization of it. I also maintain it and keep it up-to-date.

SYSVIEW has everything you need.

Only the base feature is used.

It provides much more info regarding the mainframe and interfaces, with ease of use (menus); has many more options available compared to the previous product.

Perhaps the CPU usage: When SYSVIEW is accessed via VTAM, the CPU usage is higher than compared to when its accessed via TSO using exactly the same commands, e.g., Display active tasks.

I have used it for 12 years.

As mentioned, we did have issues with high CPU usage when accessed directly via VTAM but overcame it when accessed via TSO.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is professional and very efficient.

We previously used a different solution. The main reason we switched was the cost saving but it also provided much more functionality.

Initial setup was fairly straightforward.

I’m not sure about pricing but we have numerous CA products with an overall pricing and license.

We evaluated COMPLETE and OMEGAMON.

Do not hesitate; it’s invaluable.

• Job degradation and analysis

It gives an indication of potential performance bottlenecks.

The screen layout could be updated and be more modern looking.

The product has a 1980’s interface and it seems no investment whatsoever has been made in this respect.

It’s a green texted screen, the navigation is poor because you can’t use the cursor for selection.

Exiting the product does not allow for the standard ‘=x’ instruction. You have to Pf3 all the way out.

Great product...terrible looking interface

I have used it for 12 years.

Sometimes in split screen, it can crash.

We have not encountered any scalability problems.

Technical support is fairly good.

We have MainView but SYSVIEW is better for z/OS internals.

It was simple to install.

Before choosing this product, we did not evaluate other options.

Do it.

• The MVS and JES2 product displays provide very detailed information.
• The REXX API allows for very simple but powerful automation.

It has benefited our organization by the automatic JES2 spool cleanup based on multiple filter criteria.

I would like to see better web browser support that display views, reports, and graphs. Currently, we use the IBM 3270 interface.

It would be nice if we could access the data and display it in a more “modern” way. I think there is some web client offered via the Vantage product. It is unclear to me what possibilities this client offers, as I do not have Vantage installed.

I would like to have a web client which supports all SYSVIEW functions and graphical dashboards. Perhaps this would enable us to export the data directly into an Excel format. After all, graphical displays on an IBM 3270 are not that great.

We have used it for over 10 years, although we stopped using it for a period of time due to a management issue.

We have not encountered any issues with stability.

We have not encountered any issues with scalability.

Technical support is very good.

We used MainView from BMC.

The installation was straightforward.

I only select the best products to use in the company. I am not involved in the final price negotiations.

We evaluated MainView and OMEGAMON.

If you are looking for a good performance monitoring and system tool, this solution offers it in a very compact product suite.

Actually, all the features are valuable. The product gives deep insight into a z/OS operating system by means of many powerful commands, each of which provides information within seconds. By contrast, using normal system commands would take minutes, or sometimes even hours, to get similar information, if at all. Similarly, there are many powerful commands for modifying a z/OS operating system.

I can emphasize this with the following examples:

1. Instead of using z/OS system commands on a system console in order to get some information from the system or to modify the system, you can use CA SYSVIEW commands to do exactly the same. Compared to a system console these commands provide a tremendously more user-friendly interface to the system and the output is being displayed much more clearly arranged and accessible than console output. This means much more efficiency, e.g. for system operators.

A specific example of this is all the Dynamic Linklist commands you can use to display and modify the MVS linklist concatenation.

2. There are a lot of commands providing system information as well as system modification for which there is no similar native support from z/OS, especially in a case of emergency. This means that, without a product like CA SYSVIEW, you either had to write your own programs providing such information/modification or you even had no chance at all to deal with such a situation. This means high productivity, e.g. for system programmers.

A specific sample for this is the ACTIVITY command with all its line commands you can use to display and modify all running address spaces in various ways, e.g. displaying allocated data sets, active enqueues, task structure, canceling address spaces of even individual tasks.

Several times it saved us tens of thousands of Euros by tremendously reducing the time necessary to solve a severe operating system problem.

As with every piece of software, there’s always room for improvement. But for our shop, the most important features of the product have been working perfectly for a very long time.

As for the JES2 component of the product, CA might improve the overall performance when accessing the JES2 spool. I do know that CA is using system interfaces from IBM to get the JES2 data, and I suspect that the actual room for improvement is in that interface. Maybe CA cannot do very much to improve performance, but it would be great to get better performance in this area.

We have been using this solution since 1993.

There are rarely stability issues, just minor issues when they do occur.

There have been no scalability issues.

In the 90s, the European first-level support was sort of lukewarm. This changed positively with the beginning of this century, and it still persists.

We had a previous solution, and we switched because CA SYSVIEW was clearly superior.

The installation was, and still is, straightforward, provided that you are a moderately experienced z/OS systems programmer.

The only additional candidate then was OMEGAMON from IBM.

A great deal of the product is definitely suitable for z/OS system specialists with some years of job experience. In other words, z/OS beginners will probably not be able to appreciate all of the product’s features. Thus, it should be evaluated by an experienced systems programmer.

• Easy Install
• One consistent interface for all components
• Many interfaces (VTAM, TSO, ISPF, Batch)
• Relatively easy to learn
• Interoperation with CA-OPS

• It's easier to diagnose problems, and find solutions
• Interoperability with CA-OPS allows for more automation.

Better historical reporting.

At least 10 years.

No.

No.

No.

Excellent. No problem with asking How-To questions.

Excellent.

No.

Relatively simple.

In House.

We used TMON before.