The Herb Garden

CICS’ Big Secret

“not a lotta people know that…” CICS comes with a valuable little friend FOR FREE.

When you installed CICS you also installed (or had the opportunity to install) a VERY USEFUL tool which has a misleading name – CICSPlex System Manager (CPSM)

CPSM is often overlooked for two reasons…

1. CICSPlex is misleading; it relates to ANY collection of CICS regions not necessarily in a SYSPlex

2. Setting up and using CPSM is not well documented. If you are running just a few or many CICS regions and can afford to run 1 or 2 more then there may be a lot of benefits including possible software savings in setting up and using CPSM.

Benefits

From a single Web Browser or ISPF session you can

• Display or change the characteristics of any / all CICS region(s)

• Define and propagate CICS resources

• Define and perform Real Time Analysis (RTA)

• Define and perform monitoring (MON)

• Define Workload Management specifications (WLM) allowing the system to dynamically decide where a transaction will run.

• You may already be running ISV software to do some of these things that come at no extra cost to your Company. (It has to be said that there is no extra data collection involved so CPSM does NOT replace any reporting you might do from other CICS monitoring products. If you can live without historic reporting then direct replacement might be a possibility.)

Functions of CPSM

A single-system image (SSI)

CPSM can provide a real-time, single-system image (SSI) of all CICS regions and resources that make up a Company’s entire transaction processing environment. CPSM creates a topology of the CICS systems and resources mapping the relationships between them. A technician no longer needs to know the location of a resource before working with it. The SSI applies to all CPSM applications: operations, monitoring, real-time analysis (RTA), and workload management (WLM).

A single point of control.

A CPSM user can manage all participating CICS systems and their resources from a single session, a single point of control for the enterprise so the CPSM operator is able to manage large and complex configurations of CICS resources from a single session.

Management of your business applications

Your entire enterprise can be managed in terms of your business applications rather than your CICS systems. Using Business Application Services (BAS) you can manage your resources at the application level, by providing:

• A single point of definition for resources. All the resources for the CICS systems and the relationships between them are held on the CPSM data repository. CPSM produces local and remote instances of a resource from a single definition.

• Logical scoping, which enables you to link and manage your resources according to their business relationship, rather than by their physical location in a CICS system.

• Installation of resources, either automatically at CICS start up, or dynamically, as required, into the participating CICS regions. BAS provides an alternative to resource definition online (RDO). BAS frees resource definitions from associations with only one group. Resource definitions can be used and reused, and associated with more than one group as needed. You can, if you wish, manage individual resources, rather than a group.

Operations for the entire CICSplex

Due to SSI a user can (from any point of control) perform tasks either across the entire CICSplex, across a selected subset or for an individual CICS region.

Information can be displayed about the current status of one or more instances of a CICS resource in an enterprise.

The status of resources can also be changed with a single entry.

Action commands can be issued to affect the status of the displayed resources.

You use the Web User Interface or the ISPF EUI to issue the commands. The responses are displayed in panels known as operations views that can summarize related facts and provide access, using hyperlinks to other, related information.

Management of your workloads

CPSM's workload management (WLM) uses a supplied dynamic routing program (EYU9XLOP) to route eligible work requests from a requesting region to a suitable target region selected at the time the transaction is initiated.

EYU9XLOP can be customised and used in conjunction with the CICS-supplied user-replaceable programs DFHDYP and DFHDSRP to handle most dynamic routing requirements.

Automated exception reporting for CICS resources

CPSM's Real-Time Analysis (RTA) function provides automatic, external, notification of any nominated conditions. The notification can take the form of a console message, or of an alert to NetView, or both.

Real-time analysis can asked to notify about any aspect of a resource's status.

Real-time analysis also enables you to take actions without having to use an external automation product.

Monitoring functions for the collection of statistical data for CICS resources

The CPSM monitoring functions support the collection of performance-related data, at user-defined intervals, for named resource instances within a set of CICS systems.

An application programming interface (API) CPSM provides an application programming interface (API) that allows applications to:

• Access information about CICS and CPSM resources

• Invoke the services of CPSM. A command-level interface is available to programs that are written in Assembler, PL/I, COBOL or C. In addition, a REXX run-time interface is available under z/OS Batch, TSO, and NetView.

Management of the CPSM environment

You manage the CPSM environment using:

• CPSM objects To define the configuration of your CICS systems to CPSM (and to define your BAS, WLM, RTA, and monitoring requirements) you create CPSM objects, and associate them with each other. For each object, and for each association or link between them, a record is created in a CPSM data repository.

• Data repository The data repository contains the objects that define the CPSM components, resources, system management requirements, and the relationships between them. The definitions can be created using the Web User Interface or EUI views, the CPSM API, or the batched repository-update facility.

• The batched repository-update facility The batched repository-update facility allows you to create and update large numbers of CPSM and CICS resource definitions by submitting one command that is used as the template for other definitions. The batched repository-update facility is also used for migrating your definitions from one platform to another, and for backing up the data repository. More information is given in The batched repository-update facility.

Management of time-dependent activity

CPSM's facilities can be made time dependent. RTA and monitoring definitions can be activiated only during a specific time for instance. You are able to create time period-definitions that control:

• Exactly when any part of your enterprise is operational, regardless of the local time zone.

• The times you want certain system management functions to be operational. Integration with Tivoli(R) Business Systems Manager For users of Tivoli Business Systems Manager, the CPSM Instrumentation feature supplied with that product enables users to view status information for the CMAS and MAS environments of the CICSplex.

• CICS