Spring 2024 Edition April 15, 2024
Winter is over and change freezes have “thawed”. We are seeing a lot of activity for release
migrations and new installs. The Workload Scheduler Distributed Agent for z/OS (DDRIVEN) is
getting more attention as a way to transition from z/OS to a more distributed environment.
Note “DDRIVEN” is NOT the “zcentric” agent. A zcentric agent connects to a zWS controller,
a “DDRIVEN” agent connects to a distributed master (MDM, DDM or broker). A lot of SSL
certificate issues have been showing up in cases.
zWS Team News
Gary Watts has rejoined the zWS team after having worked on other products in recent years like BigFix and CICS TOOLs. He will continue to work with CICS Tools, File Manager and Fault Analyzer, but the zWS team will benefit from his vast experience with z/OS, TCPIP, etc (He even understands “Aussie Rules” football!)
Rodrigo Oliveira Junqueira has been the manager of the zWS level 2 team since August 2023. I had neglected to mention this in the previous 2 newsletters (he also manages some other products like CICS TOOLS).
Major maintenance items:
Last time I referred to DWC 10.2 FP1 -It is really maintenance release 10.2.1 not a fix pack.
There is no fix pack README, just announcement letters, as 10.2.1 is part of “continuous availability”.
9.5 FP7: (this really is a fix pack):
Updated documentation https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/workload-automation/9.5.0?topic=product-library-in-pdf-format
README https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7106995
This fix pack is focused on security vulnerabilities and product quality.
– 155 apars fixed
– more than 90 security vulnerabilities fixed
– All plug-ins updated
zWS DOC APAR PH59585
It’s unusual to consider a DOC APAR to be a major change, but in this case
PH59585 is a major rework of the Migration chapter (Chapter 6) of the Planning
and Installation Guide. The web version of the manuals will not be refreshed until July 2024.
You can read the text at https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/apar/PH59585
but it is a “delta” from the current text so I am going to cover the main points here.
The migration technote: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/213015
ZWSTECHNOTE : MIGRATION TO NEW RELEASE – BEST PRACTICES ( zWS z Workload Scheduler )
was created since the Migration chapter of the Planning and Installation Guide was “overly complex and confusing”.
This has been addressed to a large extent by the doc changes made in this APAR.
First all references to “OPCA” are changed to “controller”, “OPCS” changed to “server”
and “OPCB”, “OPCC”, and “OPCD” are all change to “tracker”
Second, the section on “Empty data sets” mentioned EQQEVDS, but this is now
clarified to mean just the EQQEVDS of the controller, not the tracker.
This means that NO datasets need to be modified to migrate a tracker; the
tracker just needs to be pointed to a different load library (SEQQLMD0) and if
needed, the subsystem can be overridden with the BUILDSSX and SSCMNAME parameters.
This is very important, since even with the checkpoint merge process, event records
can be lost if a tracker is migrated. There is now a way to migrate a tracker without any
possibility of losing any event records – which is to migrate as part of an IPL –
that is, set up the subsystem name table, tracker JCL and parameters to use a new release
prior to an IPL, and then IPL. The migration is automatic.
If you choose to migrate a tracker on a running LPAR, the documentation has been corrected to
mention that to restart with a new zWS release, you need to specify BUILDSSX(REBUILD) and
SSCMNAME(EQQSSCMn,PERMANENT) only the first time the tracker is started (then BUILDSSX and
SSCMNAME parameters should be removed, and the subsystem name table IEFSSNxx modified for the
new release. Doing this however it is possible to lose any event records from tracker shutdown
to restart, such as ETT triggers and job tracking records.
Third, there is a clarification about the “local” datastore of the controller task if you are
using Restart and Cleanup: In the controller it is not necessary for EQQPKI01,
EQQSKI01, EQQSDFnn to be empty. (It was already clear that for the datastore task,
the EQQPKI01, EQQSKI01, EQQUDFnn and EQQSDFnn could be reused from an earlier release).
Lastly, a reminder was put into the section “Customization considerations” that
The DWC must be migrated before migrating the controller to a new release, because the DWC release must be later than or equal to the controller release. This was previously mentioned in the “Memo to Users” document.
If you are planning a migration (like 9.3 to 10.1 or 9.5 to 10.1) and have questions after reading this,
please open a case with a subject like “Proactive migration request” and the support team will try to ensure that your migration will be successful (without requiring a severity 1 call out at 4 AM on a weekend : ))
Flashes
If you don’t receive notification for flashes, check your settings at www.ibm.com/support/mynotifications
No new FLASHes
Hipers
These are the new HIPERs since January 2024:
PH59946 EQQM911E MESSAGE COULD APPEAR IN CONTROLLER’S MLOG IF AN OCCURENCE IS ADDED VIA ETT
9.5 UI96080
10.1 UI96081
PH58083 ABEND 878-10 OF THE CONTROLLER FOR AN HIGH WORKLOAD OF ZCENTRIC JOBS WITH HTTP CONNECTION.
9.5 UI96200
10.1 UI96201
PH58370 PIF JOB FAILURE IS GENERATING EQQM991E ERROR MESSAGES IN THE CONTROLLER’S EQQMLOG INSTEAD OF ONLY IN THE JOB’S EQQMLOG
9.5 UI95415
10.1 UI95416
PH59943 ABEND S0C4 IN EQQZHTCL MODULE
9.5 UI95890
10.1 UI95891
Technotes
Revised technotes:
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7058285
ZWSTECHNOTE : The list of external dependencies of an occurrence might randomly appear empty
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7047661
ZWSECHNOTE : GSKIT ERROR 416 – Permission denied for HTTPS connection
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6857859
ZWSTECHNOTE : DWCZOS : Install DWC z/OS with DB2 database using a non-SUPERUSER Release 10.1 Fix pack 1 (or higher)
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/6839047
ZWSTECHNOTE : DWCZOS : Installing a DWC on z/OS with a DB2 database (Release 9.5 Fix pack 6 ))
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/542965
ZWSTECHNOTE : Use of DATINT parameter in WAPL
https://supportcontent.ibm.com/node/340761
ZWSTECHNOTE : z Workload Scheduler DUMP ANALYSIS via IPCS
New technotes:
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7121103
ZWSTECHNOTE:AWSBIN009E An error occurred while starting workstation: “AWSBCT040E Service 2002 already active on FTA_WS”.
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7113529
ZWSTECHNOTE: How to identify the dependencies to be removed when daily plan detects a loop condition.
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7113526
ZWSTECHNOTE: EQQE027I does not appear in one of the zIWS instance
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7062414
ZWSTECHNOTE : Correct documentation link for zWS 10.1 manuals
Ideas (formerly RFE)
Many new ideas have been added for both Workload Automation and z Workload Scheduler. You can add your own requests or vote for the ones you would like to see implemented at https://ideas.ibm.com
Z Workload Scheduler:
Improve dynamic scheduling, with scenarios driven by unplanned workload [ZWS-I-244]
Add feature to chose Local or UTC Time in APPLYUNTIL function [ZWS-I-243]
Dynamic Workload Console Dashboards should be able to show engine status Offline/Online [ZWS-I-242]
Allow restart and cleanup function of zWS to support restart at a CHECKPOINT value (similar to AUTORECOVERY) [ZWS-I-241]
By default, disable activation of the operation user field “SUBJOB USER”. [ZWS-I-240]
TLS encryption for all Mainframe endpoints, Controller, trackers, server. [ZWS-I-239]
DWC Connection Engine Admin Role [ZWS-I-238]
‘Submit Ad Hoc’ should work for a mainframe job [ZWS-I-237]
‘Search’ button in ‘Edit JCL’ option in Dynamic Workload Console should allow to fetch JCL from any dataset [ZWS-I-236]
WAPL | Permit partial values for FILTER segment/record comperators [ZWS-I-235]
WAPL | Apply FILTER-Function to OBJECTs and SAVELISTs in LIST or SELECT Statements [ZWS-I-234]
add new field to AUDITLOG with CPU Usage [ZWS-I-233]
DWC should not be installed in z/OS UNIX in a zFS filesystem with read/write access [ZWS-I-232]
Support JAVA 11 for Historical Data Archiver for enabling reporting feature in TDWC. [ZWS-I-231]
Eliminate the TEMPORARY operand of parameter SSCMNAME as it is not necessary and causes many problems [ZWS-I-230]
Make it easy to find the scripts needed to create the DB2 history database on a non-z/OS platform (UNIX, LINUX,WINDOWS) [ZWS-I-229]
change in the behavior of SMOOTHSUBRATE [ZWS-I-228]
User fields at occurrence level [ZWS-I-227]
Workload Automation:
I selected a few that may be of interest to zWS customers:
Add Ability to Run Datagather for FTA/DA/MDM from TDWC and sftp to TDWC tmp directory [WAO-I-508]
Search for objects that use another object [WAO-I-507]
DWC Admin rights to be extended [WAO-I-505]
Single sign in (SSO) for DWC portal (To login for DWC main page) [WAO-I-497]
Enhancement request to take an action when all rerun attempts got completed using Event rule. [WAO-I-494]
Amazon recently announced DB2 on RDS. We’d like to take advantages of AWS infrastructure and ensure DB2 RDS is fully supported with IWS. [WAO-I-492]
Prevent RESUBMIT job stream plug-in job type to submit same stream multiple times within same minute [WAO-I-489]
BLOGs
You can see all the BLOGS related to workload automation (distributed workload scheduler, DWC and zWS) at http://www.workloadautomation-community.com/blogs
New BLOGs:
Workload management across diverse environments using multiple contexts
Get to know OCLI! Five interesting facts and getting started. (orchestration command line interface)
Seamless Integration: Leveraging Workload Automation to Orchestrate Azure Service Bus
Maximizing Efficiency: Harnessing Workload Automation to Orchestrate AWS Glue
Automating Workflows using HCL Universal Orchestrator: A Guide to Auto-ticketing & Notifications
Practical guide to Release Dependencies, Delete Dependency, Cancel, Cancel Pending and Kill actions in Job and Job stream monitor.
Wrap Up
I have my plane ticket (and ride to the airport) all set for the ASAP University conference in May.
Hope to see you there! (May 19 – 22, 2024 in Miami, FL)
There will be a “post-ASAP” newsletter in July.
