SYSVIEW Performance Intelligence Reviews

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.

We're using CA SYSVIEW to monitor performance and availability on the mainframe. We replaced MainView by BMC with it. It was a cost savings for us.

It integrates very nicely with other products from CA, like OPS/MVS, and it's easy to learn.

There are some parity features, things you can do in a JES2 or JES3 shop, which you can't with CA SYSVIEW. For example, purge output from the spool. So better parity between JES would be useful.

It has been very stable. We've only been using it for a couple months, but we haven't had any problems with it.

We're a pretty small shop, so I'm sure we can scale it up to what we need it to do.

Technical support is very good. They get back to us very quickly and usually have a very good answer. Even if it's one I don't want to hear, but they're good about that.

We previously used MainView from BMC. Our contract was up for renewal, and the sales lady offered CA SYSVIEW as part of the contract renewal. The pitch was cost savings, and it was priced better, so we went with that.

For us, vendor is general. It's mainly the product that we care about, but cost is definitely in there. This does pretty much the same thing that MainView does at a cheaper cost. That's why it won.

I installed CA SYSVIEW. The actual product install is very simple. The web interface install is far from easy. The manual isn't very straightforward on that at all because it's pieces of a different product. Installing it on web interfaces was a challenge.

We didn’t evaluate any alternatives for this product.

Just take your time and set thresholds and alerts properly.

It makes life easier because if you are experienced enough you can find any problems and resolve them easily. Thus, making the machine more reliable and stable.

We would like to see better graphics in the next version, so that even less experienced individuals can find problems without much effort. This can help one to see the bigger picture and easily figure out what's going on.

It can help to display the data better and you would not need lots of knowledge to see what is going on within the mainframe.

The stability of this product is excellent. We did not encounter any issues.

It is a mainframe product, so it only runs on the mainframe.

I have used technical support and it is excellent.

We were using a different solution before this tool and moved over to CA because of the total cost. We already had a contract and an existing relationship with CA.

In my opinion, most of the products work anyway so it is primarily the cost factor and the product’s easy to use functionality, that are important factors while choosing a vendor.

I was involved in the setup process. If you use the defaults, then it is quite straightforward. However, if you have to go through the entire process for the first time, it does take a little bit of time but is not bad.

It is a good product for mainframe management. It is a lot easier to install and maintain than most of the other products that I am familiar with, such as BMC vs CA mainframe management or IBM mainframe management tools.

The transaction troubleshooting for the applications is the product’s most valuable feature. Giving the opportunity for those applications to be able to see what's wrong with a transaction and make corrections; giving them the information readily accessible.

At the same time, from a systems end, we use it for taking care of the everyday type of stuff that the applications don't see. We get on and hopefully keep the system up and rolling.

I think a lot of the stuff has to zero in and make it quicker. I think overall the SYSVIEW product right now has a lot of commands. There's a lot of panels. A lot of information. What we need to do is trim it down for the applications or the avid user. A lot of what they're doing right now, they're bringing in new hires out of college. We don't want to make it more difficult to use. We want to make it easier to use.

I think SYSVIEW has to sit down and look at the tool. That's what we're trying to do with them now, make it a little bit easier to utilize versus trying to remember all these individual commands. It would take something simple; develop a couple more panels, fast path panels.

I have been using it for over two years.

Stability has been pretty good. We have not had any issues with it lately.

Scalability has been 100%, too. We haven't had any issues with scalability. We use it on a lot of systems.

It has managed the transition very well.

It takes a couple of prods once in a while to get technical support going. I try to convince them to say it is something that's valuable for everyone. Even if you go out and test the waters with it, you'll see that this kind of stuff that we're suggesting would be kind of nice. From that end of it, they've been pretty accommodating. They sit down with us and listen to what we have to say and then, we try to collaborate and come up with a viable solution, which is good. It's all we want. Because we don't see the whole picture from our end, they don't see the whole picture from both ends. We sit down and come up with a good solution.

I'm not too crazy about the CA community; it's kind of like Facebook or anything else, it's nice, but we go right to the jugular most of the time. If we need support, we go to support.

Now, the one good thing on the CA community is possibly the video clips that come out. We kind of suggested that and that's getting better. They're creating more and more. Now they have slacked off a little. I haven't seen too many developed lately. But they need to get more of those. I think they're used a lot. We can use them in our training and they're very valuable.

Other than that, my social is just to collaborate on a certain thing and get these votes. I say something like, “Hey I’ve got an idea, here's a vote.” I've put a half a dozen of them out there and they'll get no votes; no one looks at them. It’s the same thing we do when we collaborate on the sprint sessions. There's not too many people that voice their opinions. I think it's the same thing you know. They don't want to sit on the communities and they don't want to open their mouth in the sprint review. I don't think it's just unique to that.

It's good that people are listening. I just wish they would tell us more. For example, we went to a couple of sessions that they had locally in Pittsburgh; a CA community-type, three-day session. We ran on a couple things and at the end he said, "Oh yeah, by the way, we’ve got this now." Well, why didn't he tell us sooner?

If we have an idea, it would be nice if they come back and say, “Hey, we are working on your idea but we need a little bit more information.” But that type of information isn't really relayed. It's like a big wall in between. Even though they're working on it, they don't tell us.

We actually had two other monitors and we still have one. This product actually replaced one of the other monitors we were maintaining. We went through rather intense outlining of our pre-requisites - here's what we want - and CA actually took care of most of the issues. Our concern was what SYSVIEW didn't have and the other products did have; they accommodated us with it on time, within the specified time frame.

It's a good product. It's a busy product. We like it. I wouldn't tell them about the logs or the transaction history because that's my pet peeve that's been around for a long time. But I understand that SYSVIEW already invested a lot of money and time into the product, so we’ve got to come in from the back door. When I talk to other people or tell other people about the product, I actually tell them it's a good product. It does what it's supposed to do. The support’s good and that's the main factor right there. That's what you want out of a product.

I didn’t give it a perfect rating - I'd never do that – because there's some still more work to be done on it. It's a good product. It does what it's supposed to do.

I really appreciate that actions can be triggered by thresholds. For example, when a threshold is reached, a job can be launched without having to use triglevel, capevent or another option.

Many SYSVIEW users have ceased manually performing functions.

Many sectors of IT appreciate and use the MVS display phase.

We can easily monitor any batch and CICS event, and this assures us in times of very high workload.

I think they could improve the frontend action stage and alert thresholds, for a better and more-usable job action or REXX launch.

Better management of the relationship between a threshold and the start of the response action, be it a job or a REXX, similar to the operation of OPS/MVS (in centers where there is not a SYSVIEW/OPS/MVS pair).

We have been using it for 6-7 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support has very good, kind people; they are available and prepared.

I did not previously use a different solution.

The first time I saw SYSVIEW, I found it straightforward and easy to use. I then encountered some difficulties when I started using it full-time. But now it's alright. In any case, when I speak to the service center, I still discover new product features.

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

I can easily and highly recommend it.