Does Compress exploit zEDC (zEnterprise Data Compression) features dynamically?

Products

• Compress Data Compression for MVS

Issue/Introduction

Upgrading hardware to zEDC (zEnterprise Data Compression) capabilities. How does Compress exploit this new feature?

Environment

z/OS 2.2 and above using the new hardware requirements for zEDC

Compression r5.5 and above

Resolution

Compress does not exploit the new zEDC features. Compress performs a software compression function and utilizes above and below the line memory during its functions. This increases the processor overhead for each job affected by the Compress intercepts and functions.

zEDC is a hardware function which has its own PCIe cards and uses this storage to process the compression functions and pushed the output to a defined pool of storage defined in SM (most efficient).

The process of using the hardware removes the software compression overhead that Compress utilizes. You may see some improvement in disk utilization using software and hardware compression for some files. However, zEDC works best with PS files.

zEDC also performs its compression before you enclose your data encryption process which buys added security. Compress has no such external function and is not involved in encryption processes.

You may be best served by determining what data sets can be removed from Compress control and place them in zEDC control for compression. Utilization of the zBNA utility from IBM can assist with this process. Compress may work very well with some data sets better than zEDC in your unique IT environment.