American worker · written operating path

THE
FLOOR PLAYBOOK

You built this fellowship for the worker who never left the floor.
I never left.
This is how I write the operating path when perfect specs never arrive.

American Tech is unpaid, remote, 12 weeks, Foundry and AIP in the hands of people who still touch metal. The IPS artifacts are that hunger on paper: you do not wait for a clean CSV. You measure CPU, RAM, disk wait. You write what was changed. You name the skill-up. You leave a QA twin of production.

Three surfaces for this role

What the artifacts mean here

Write it down

Environment Summary, Upgrade Roadmap, Phase review, v10 test deck. Owner on the cover. That is Foundry instinct — ontology, not a dashboard class.

Measure the garage

Same loop now on an RTX 4070: baseline, goal, bottleneck, eliminate. Waddell & Reed’s I/O wait was the plant telling the truth. The GPU routing bench is the same muscle.

Earn the door

Unpaid. Two weeknights. I still want it. Knowledge transfer is a deliverable. The team is praised in writing. Loyalty is how a fellow becomes a hire.

Google Drive · IPS artifacts · 2017 floor

What a real IPS document looks like

Not a slide with a logo. Owner, date, environment evidence, what was already changed, what is still open, and the recommendation the customer can execute without you in the building. These are the files from Drive: Environment Summary, Upgrade Roadmap v3, Phase 2 review, PC 10 deck.

Artifact · Environment Summary

PowerCenter Environment Recommendations

Author and owner on the cover. Overview of how mixed internal / consultant / offshore developers actually use the platform. Then a numbered review of what was measured and changed — not a wish list.

Utilization first: CPU, RAM, disk wait, database wait. Low utilization is a finding. 100% CPU is a finding.
Config actually applied: ulimit, heap, concurrent jobs, sorter/lookup cache, stale session-log cleanup.
Incidents closed with GCS: P1 start-delay, bulk-load sorter RAM, dispatch that would not start.
Grid/HA and TCO path: Gold/Platinum SLA tiers, QA twin of production, repository off the shared DB host.

Artifact · Upgrade Roadmap v3

Informatica Upgrade Roadmap

Current-state performance review, then the product recommendation: PowerCenter with Grid and HA. Internal domain/gateway/node design. External clustering and the shared filesystem that makes or breaks Session on Grid.

Graphs over a month, not a hallway anecdote. Round-robin dispatch vs adaptive. RAM sitting idle while cache spills to disk.
Filesystem matrix: UNC, DFS, CIFS/NAS, NFS v3, GFS2, Veritas CFS, GPFS. POSIX + I/O fencing or you do not have HA.
Database HA: Oracle RAC / Data Guard, SQL Server mirroring. Source and target availability called out separately from the domain.
Admin of the grid: logging, restarting services, installing new components. The customer can operate it.

Artifact · Phase review

Architecture Review — next increment

Phase 2 is not “more of Phase 1.” Name the product features the next workload actually requires, the topology that will hang, the filesystem that will plateau partitioning, and the skill-up the team still needs.

Advanced XML / real-time web-service consumers need Model Repository + Data Integration Service, cores, and Developer-tool skill.
30+ repositories and 30+ integration services is TCP/IP overhead. Upgrades become a migration factory.
Outstanding deliverables are demos the customer can see: Proactive Monitoring, Advanced XML on their schema.
Write down that the team is good. Openness is the coaching surface.

Deck · PC 10 Upgrade Overview

How the room chooses an upgrade

Jeremy Panasuk / Informatica Professional Services. Why v10, PAM, three upgrade types, six classes of test, Data Validation Option to make same-data honest.

In-place — short cycle, no extra schemas, outage for restore. Cannot rename domain or nodes.
Parallel — snapshot the repo, install fresh, change names, no domain-install outage. Migrate users/groups.
Clone — snapshot the domain, fastest like-for-like go-live, still an outage for restore.
DVO: 50% source-to-target, 80% regression, 90% upgrade testing. Audit trail. No extra server.

American Tech translation. You asked for builders who do not wait for a clean CSV. These files are that hunger on paper: measure CPU, RAM, disk wait; write what was changed; name the skill-up; leave a QA twin of production. That is Foundry instinct — ontology, not a dashboard class. The garage GPU bench is the same muscle as Waddell & Reed’s I/O wait.

Sample Documentation · xyz teaching templates

Five files IPS used to teach the next consultant

Google Drive folder Informatica / Sample Documentation. Same author as the named floors. Cover says xyz. The operating path is identical. Public copy still does not publish hostnames, UNC aliases, or raw capacity tables.

xyz- PowerCenter Environment Summary.doc · Jun 16, 2017

Teaching copy of the MBFS Environment Summary

Author and owner: Jeremy Panasuk. Company on the named original: Mercedes-Benz Financial. This is the file with the performance cheat sheet inside.

ALFA→ODS at 100% CPU. Cache RAM raised so large transformations stop spilling — 20–30% off job runtime.
PWX CDC / batch POC vs the bundled bulk loader. GFS2 has no flock — keep-persistence-in-DB is on, and it costs performance.
Custom Integration Service property so RHEL reports free memory correctly. Model Office + production domains to best practice.
When dispatch will not start: entire technology stack plus Informatica GCS in the same room. Not a ticket queue.

xyz- PowerCenter Environment Summary (2).doc · Apr 14, 2017

Teaching copy of the Northwestern Mutual Environment Summary

Author and owner: Jeremy Panasuk. Low utilization is a finding. Config that was actually applied is listed by number.

ulimit 64k, DB2 repo settings, concurrent jobs 500, heap, stale NFS session logs cleaned so I/O stops lagging.
P1 start-delay: GCS escalation. DB2 semaphore on the Informatica client. Resolved.
Gold / Platinum parent GRID: dedicated nodes for the high SLA, then spill to shared nodes. LOB-split Integration and Repository services with a backup RS on another node.
QA domain identical to production so the next incident does not take prod down. Tidal for schedule. Proactive Monitoring reviewed. 4- or 6-core VMs to right-size TCO.

xyz_Informatica_Upgrade_Roadmap_v3.doc · Jun 27–30, 2017

Teaching copy of the Waddell & Reed Upgrade Roadmap

Author: Jeremy Panasuk. Two-node Windows 2008 VMs, 4 cores / 16 GB each. PowerCenter 9.1.0 plus Data Quality 9.6.1. A month of graphs, not a hallway anecdote.

Round-robin dispatch made the two nodes uneven. 80–90% CPU at peak. RAM only half used — cache still spilling to disk.
Disk wait 30–90 ms (Microsoft’s published max is 10–12). SQL wait past 200 ms with RAM sitting idle. UNC as the file share is not HA.
HA is resilience, failover, and recovery. Internal domain/gateway/nodes vs external clustering and the shared filesystem.
Filesystem matrix: UNC, DFS, CIFS/NAS, NFS v3, Veritas CFS, GFS2, GPFS. Session on Grid vs Workflow on Grid. Adaptive dispatch. Admin of the grid: logging, restart, install.

Informatica_xyz_2_Summary - Copy.doc · Oct 24–30, 2017

Teaching copy of the Farmers Phase 2 Architecture Review

Author: Jeremy Panasuk. Phase 2 is not more of Phase 1. Guidewire Advanced XML and real-time web-service consumers.

Model Repository + Data Integration Service, extra cores, Developer-tool skill-up named in the write-up.
30+ repositories and 30+ integration services is TCP/IP overhead. Domains hang. Upgrades become a migration factory.
NFS on NAS is Informatica’s least recommended HA filesystem: extra hops, weak cache coherency, lock-manager bounce when a host dies. Partitioning plateaus at one inode per logical node. Expect 35–100% slower than a proper CFS with host-side striping. Supported NAS: NetApp WAFL or EMC — not a RAID export called a share.
Veritas CFS or GPFS: I/O fencing, concurrent reads/writes, no keep-persistence-in-DB flag (that flag can cost ~20%). Outstanding demos: Proactive Monitoring / Operational Insight, Advanced XML on their Guidewire schema. Team praised for openness.

PC_V10_Upgrade_Overview.pptx · 28 slides · Jeremy Panasuk, IPS

The coaching deck that stops “just run the installer”

Why v10, PAM first, three upgrade types, six classes of test, Data Validation Option so same-data is honest.

Editions: Standard (batch ETL, partitioning), Advanced (Metadata Manager / Business Glossary, real-time engine), Premium (DVO, Proactive Monitoring, advanced transformation).
In-place: short cycle, no extra schemas, users/groups stay, outage for restore, cannot rename domain or nodes.
Parallel: snapshot the repo, install fresh, can rename, no domain-install outage, migrate users/groups, small settings-drift risk.
Clone: snapshot the domain, fastest like-for-like, still an outage, extra HTTPS caveats. Six-class test: operability (smoke), same-data, security, performance, 3rd-party (schedulers, SVN, encrypt, file transfer, customer monitors), HA vs DR. DVO: 50% source-to-target, 80% regression, 90% upgrade testing.

These five files are the kit. Named copies (MBFS, Northwestern Mutual, Waddell & Reed, Farmers) are the work. xyz copies are how the next IPS consultant was taught to write the same document. Hostnames, UNC aliases, and capacity tables stay off this site.

Performance methodology · MBFS cheat sheet

The cheat sheet that stayed with the team

Left inside the Mercedes-Benz Financial Environment Summary. Same loop as a GPU routing bench: a baseline that is allowed to be slow, a goal, one change between runs, notes that make the next person dangerous.

1Establish baseline

2Set a goal

3Find bottleneck

4Eliminate it

5Repeat

Performance dos

Cache as much as possible in memory. Spilling lookup / aggregator / sorter / joiner index to disk is the silent 20–30% tax.
Spread I/O across as many devices as possible. The shared filesystem is a product decision, not a mount.
Round-robin a single input file until you prove that file is the bottleneck.
Key-range partition to align the target with database partitioning. Pass-through to add CPU. Then stop.
Thread statistics first. Transformation ~100% busy → repartition point. Reader/writer ~100% busy → maybe the thread, maybe the system.

Performance don’ts

Do not add multiple partitions until you have tested and tuned a single partition. Written three times on purpose.
Do not add partitions or repartition points if the session is already source- or target-constrained.
Do not add partitions if CPUs are already maxed (%idle under ~5%).
Do not optimize a sub-two-minute session. Why are you here?
Do not change three knobs between runs. You will not know what helped.

Isolation tests when thread statistics lie

Target: write to a flat file instead of the database. Filter FALSE immediately before the target. Compare to a stand-alone bulk loader. Faster = target-constrained.
Source: filter FALSE after the Source Qualifier. Read from a flat file instead of the database. FTP the remote file outside PowerCenter. Same speed = source-constrained.
Simple before complex: analyze table / runstats before optimizer hints. Source-only mapping to take transformation and target out of the experiment.
OS evidence: vmstat and sar. Low %idle = CPU. Non-zero si/so or page-outs = memory. Sustained %wio = disk. Notes: session time, rows/sec, config delta, CPU and disk.

Upgrade operating path · PC 10 deck

Pick the type. Then test like go-live depends on it.

The v10 overview is the coaching deck. The roadmap is the customer-specific evidence. Together they stop an account from “just running the installer.”

When	Type	Why
Very short cycle, many installs already certified in a sandbox	In-place	No extra schemas. Users/groups stay. Outage for domain restore. Cannot change domain or node names.
Longer cycle, tight outage, want new names	Parallel	Fresh server + repo snapshot. No domain-install outage. Migrate users/groups. Small settings-drift risk.
Pre-prod go-live, minimize settings drift	Clone	Identical domain snapshot. Fast like-for-like. Still an outage. Cannot rename. Extra HTTPS caveats.

Operability

Smoke: installer, domain start, repo wizard, services, connectivity, a workflow runs, client login.

Same data

Full, partial, or automated regression. The longest bar on the plan. DVO exists so you test all rows, not a sample.

Security

External: injection, SSL, DB grants, open ports. Internal: admin passwords, folder / connection / tool rights.

Performance

Client, integration service, server, network. Equal or better than the legacy environment — with numbers.

3rd-party

Schedulers, SVN, deploy frameworks, encryption, file transfer, customer monitors. The item people skip.

HA / DR

HA = single-instance failover, measured in uptime. DR = data-center loss, measured in recovery time and stagnation.

Customer coaching

Leave the team dangerous

Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless. Knowledge transfer is a deliverable. Skill-up is named in the architecture review. The whole stack sits in one room with GCS. The team is praised in writing. Loyalty is the runbook they keep.

How coaching showed up in the Drive files

Named skill-up. Farmers: Developer tool and Advanced XML for Guidewire. Navy Federal: install, services, naming standards, go-live tests, plus TDM reusable POL_PHI rules so the next developer does not invent a masking name per application.
Walked loads. MBFS knowledge transfer on ALFA→ODS, ODS→flat file, ODS→warehouse — not a PDF dump after the fact.
One room. When production would not dispatch, the recommendation was the entire technology stack plus Informatica GCS in the same room.
Praise in the deliverable. Farmers: the team was knowledgeable, open, and could explain why the current architecture existed. That sentence is coaching.
Runbook stays. Mercedes tuning docs adopted by TCS. Dawn Type-2 / security / upgrade path locked. QA twin of production so the next incident does not take prod down.

The receipts in the files

Four floors. Same floor loop.

Anonymized “xyz” copies were the teaching templates. The named copies are the work. This site carries the operating findings, not hostnames.

Northwestern Mutual · Apr 2017

QA/prod domains brought to best practice (ulimit 64k, DB2 repo settings, concurrent jobs 500, heap, stale NFS logs). P1 workflow-start delay: GCS escalation, DB2 semaphore on the Informatica client. Grid/HA TCO path and a QA twin of production.

20–30%

Mercedes-Benz Financial · Jun 2017

ALFA→ODS at 100% CPU. Cache RAM raised so large transformations stop spilling to disk — 20–30% runtime drop. PWX CDC POC vs bulk load. Performance cheat sheet and load walkthroughs left with the team.

v9→v10

Waddell & Reed · Jun 2017

2-node 9.1.0 grid measured for a month: 80–90% CPU, RAM under-used, disk wait 30–90 ms, SQL wait past 200 ms. UNC is not an HA filesystem. Upgrade types + six-class test plan. Adaptive dispatch, homogeneous nodes, Linux CFS.

Phase 2

Farmers Insurance · Oct 2017

Guidewire advanced XML and real-time consumers. 30+ repos / integration services as domain risk. NFS vs Veritas/GPFS. Skill-up named. Outstanding demos: Operational Insight and Advanced XML on their schema. Team praised in the write-up.

PHI

Navy Federal · TDM 9.5.2 baseline

Informatica TDM 9.5.2 HF1 in Shared Analytics on AIX: PHI masking and subset so non-production is not production. Reusable generic rules (type + technique), POL_PHI / POL_PII wrappers, one table per assigning plan so PowerCenter masking workflows can run concurrently. LDAP groups for authorization. Discovery profiles before anyone guesses which columns are sensitive. Cover: IPS TDM Expert Aditya Mohanty. Platform: Jeremy’s 3,000-hour V1 — install, services, naming standards, go-live tests. Hostnames and production inventory stay off this copy.

Source artifacts from Google Drive: Northwestern Mutual Environment Summary (Apr 2017, Jeremy Panasuk, IPS); Mercedes-Benz Financial Environment Summary + cheat sheet (Jun 2017, Jeremy Panasuk, IPS); Waddell & Reed Upgrade Roadmap v3 (Jun 2017, Jeremy Panasuk, IPS); Farmers Phase 2 Architecture Review (Oct 2017, Jeremy Panasuk, IPS); PowerCenter 10.0.0 Upgrade Overview (Jeremy Panasuk, IPS); Navy Federal TDM-PHI masking Development Guide, TDM 9.5.2 HF1 (cover: Aditya Mohanty, IPS TDM Expert). Anonymized “xyz” copies were teaching templates. Internal hostnames, credentials, and production table inventory are not published.

If you want the American worker this program was written for — already on the floor, already in the garage, ready for Foundry — this is the operating path.

Canonical Run Read the loyalty talk Back to the packet

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