Quod Vigilanti
New L2 Team Members
There are 2 new members to the level 2 support team: Jean Paul Rodriguez, also known as JP or Jeypee, and Michael Arriola, also known as Mike. Some of you may have worked with them already. Both are located in Manila, Philippines and support U.S. business hours. A more formal introduction will be included in Cy’s Corner #99.
Other Big News – New Problem Management Report (PMR) Platform
The platform for handling incidents has changed from RETAIN to Salesforce. PMRs are now Salesforce cases, the familiar PPPPP,BBB,CCC notations are replaced by TSnnnnnnnnn, and the new submittal and review address is www.ibm.com/mysupport. Note: If you go to the old SR location (www.ibm.com/support) you will be linked over to the new location www.ibm.com/mysupport, where you can open new cases or access your existing cases to view or modify them.
You may have seen a PMR notice like the one below for cases which were still open as of July 29, 2019:
This Service Request has been migrated to IBM’s new experience for opening and managing cases. The new case number is TS00nnnnnnn.
If you select “Open a Case” you will need to enter a product name or select a product from the pull down. The best product name to enter is “Z Workload Scheduler” which is the official name of the product as of the 9.5 release level. If you enter “TWSz” or “IWSz” you may see a choice of either “Z Workload Scheduler” or “Workload Scheduler Distributed Agent for z/OS”. Use “Z Workload Scheduler” if you want the case to be routed to the IZWS team. “Workload Scheduler Distributed Agent for z/OS” will be routed to the IWS distributed team, which can easily re-route the PMR to the IZWS team if needed. If you want support for the IWS distributed product or DWC, then use “Workload Scheduler” as the product name.
Once you select “Z Workload Scheduler” there are several additional prompts you will need to enter, such as, product version (9.5 9.3 9.2 or older), severity , z/OS version, case type (Usage or Defect), specific function, documentation collected.
There is a “don’t know” or “not sure” for most of these selections; however if you enter specific information it will give the support team a better idea as to who to assign the case to or if there may be some relevant technote or APAR.
If you do not want to open a new case, you can select CASES and get a list of your existing cases and their status. You may see status values like “IBM is working” or “Waiting for Client”.
A word about the case type field … As in the past, usage support is only available to U.S. customers that have an active Software Xcel contract.
Support Outside of Normal Business Hours
If you need support outside of traditional U.S. Eastern Time business hours (after 5 PM U.S. ET or before 3 AM U.S. ET or on the weekends), then you need to telephone support at 1-800-IBM-SERV to report your issue. You can also use the DIRECTORY OF WORLDWIDE CONTACTS to get the specific service contact and phone number for your location.
Resources … Potential for Speedy Resolution
Before opening a new, non-cricital case, check the following resources:
- IBM Technotes: As the name suggests this is a good starting point to find the most recent or most critical technotes for all supported releases of IBM Z Workload Automation, IBM Workload Scheduler for z/OS and Tivoli Workload Scheduler for z/OS arranged by release number. You may want to bookmark this page for quick reference when you encounter a new issue.
- Must gather (MUSTGATHER) collection for TWS z/OS (IWSz) PMRs: The “must gather” documentation technote includes JCL to do a DFDSS backup of all IZWS files (also known as an “APAR TAPE”).
- HCL’s Workload Automation Blog: Search for information on a specific topic for example – dynamic critical path or MCP performance (modify current plan).
DWC and Connector on z/OS
The ability to install the Dynamic Workload Console and Connector on z/OS is very new. It became available with the 9.5 Dynamic Workload Console Fix Pack 1 and PTF UI64074 for IZWS 9.5 (also known as Small Program Enhancement (SPE) 9501), however, you can use Dynamic Workload Console 9.5 with a 9.3 level controller as well.
Check the list of SPEs issued in June 2019 and the link about zLiberty.
The code needed to support Dynamic Workload Console on z/OS is available from Shop Zseries as of August 9, 2019.
Using the DB2 reporting feature of IZWS
With the Dynamic Workload Console available on z/OS, DB2 for z/OS may be a more efficient repository for your historical IZWz database versus using a distributed DB2. You may still have the DB2 database on your preferred platform (regardless of whether you are running the Dynamic Workload Console on a distributed operating system or on z/OS), as the DB2 location is specified in the DBOPT statement of the server which “talks” to the zconnector/DWC.
Two final words … Be vigilant.
Keep up with your HIPER maintenance on whatever release you are using.
In late 2018 we saw many of issues related to the 9.3 UI55005 PTF. The latest trend in severity 1 situations is consistent with the situations from several years ago … the lack of HIPER maintenance. The majority of the severity 1 situations would be averted if HIPER maintenance (6 months old or older) had been applied. Be vigilant. Keep your maintenance up-to-date to keep your systems running smoothly.
Regards,
Steve
P.S. The 100th edition of Cy’s Corner will be issued around December of this year. If you have any memories of the first Cy’s Corner or any favorite Cy’s Corner moments, lessons, or antidotes from the past, please email them to me at stephen.viola@hcl.com.
