i-Rays
IBM i (aka AS/400) Optimisation with in-depth analysis
i-Rays is your digital worker, offering you transparent insights into your IBM i (AS/400). i-Rays analyses, assesses and optimises system performance.
i-Rays rests on three columns:
Intelligent system metrics
Anomaly detection
Modern advice module
Intelligent system metrics
i-Rays displays current system metrics alongside standard reference values, thus providing a comparison between current and optimal system performance levels. Standard reference values are defined through the combination of the parameters of specific systems with those of their relevant software stacks. This function enables load trend analyses to support investment decisions on aspects such as system dimension and size.
Example application: Proactive avoidance of resource exhaustion, loss of performance and similar problems.
Anomaly detection
i-Rays continuously monitors the system and detects business-specific unusual behaviours – even during periods of low system load, such as on weekends. By filtering out likely false alarms i-Rays prevents your staff from wasting precious time on avoidable work to manually interpret results.
Example application: Relieves your staff and prevents shortages of IBM i-specialists.
Modern advice module
i-Rays identifies deviations from usual business performance loads and from the typical behaviour patterns of a given system by interpreting real-time data through the lens of historical system data and knowledge databases. The advice module also generates optional ready-to-use system commands to optimise performance.
Application example 1: Cost optimisation with reduced usage of resources and system licences.
Application example 2: Increased system transaction throughput.
Who should consider using i-Rays?
If you are responsible for IT systems where IBM i is key to both infrastructure and business reliability then i-Rays is the tool for you. Early detection of anomalies, avoidance of false alarms, and the parallel maintenance of accurate diagnostics and ongoing system adaptation to changing requirements are real challenges. Multidimensional analysis of signals originating from different system components exceeds human analytical capabilities. The noticeable reduction in the number of available experienced IBM i administrators and experts exacerbates the problem. This is where i-Rays shines.
Machine Learning (ML) algorithms automatically detect performance data anomalies and uncover patterns that are used in time series modeling. Inconsistencies in current data can be identified, prognoses based on historical data can be developed, and incidents can automatically be logged.
i-Rays covers every layer
Unlike other IBM i analysis tools, i-Rays can be integrated into many leading monitoring and analysis technologies with ease:
How you benefit from i-Rays.
i-Rays significantly automates IBM i monitoring, it eliminates many manual tasks, and enables quick identification of incidents’ causes. It provides alerts, allows for the configuration of exemptions and anomalies, and predicts resource exhaustion. Improved monitoring optimises the usage of system resources and related CPU costs, leading to noticeable cost savings. The tool protects business processes from outages and related costs. In addition, i-Rays generates valuable information for effective resource planning.
This translates into considerable time savings for administrators. At the same time, monitoring system costs are reduced.
i-Rays contributes to a unified approach to system monitoring with processes and tools, including IBM i computers.
How i-Rays works.
i-Rays conducts real time analysis of observed systems. Based on statistical methods and ML algorithms it identifies dependencies between detected phenomena. This allows for the proactive identification of anomalies in the system.
i-Rays offers extended monitoring services and a system performance adviser which can identify non-optimal system settings or program runtime parameters. Alerts provide notification of detected problems and include suggested performance optimisation steps. These suggestions come in the form of ready to use system commands, applicable to both iOS and DB2. In this way, you are enabled to run your system within its optimal performance parameters.
i-Rays functionality
i-Rays contains a dashboard with insightful reports, graphics, and diagrams. As a standard, i-Rays is equipped with a series of pre-defined dashboards. Based on these, users can configure professional, comprehensive administrator views, in addition to being able to display dashboards in Elastic, Dynatrace and other tools. The most common SLOs are based on the most important metrics.
i-Rays dashboard
The presentation view is based on ELK or Dynatrace. It can be filtered and sorted by different metrics. Drill down methods make it easy to access low level dashboards, charts, and source data in JSON format. The dashboard also contains methods to create alarms grounded in ML algorithms. These can predict average values for all metrics and be used to trigger alarms in various formats: records of incident protocols, highlighting, entries in customer systems.
Below are three example screenshots of a dashboard in a Dynatrace environment:
Intelligent system metrics
Anomaly detection
Modern advice module
