Requirements for CA TLMS Health Checker
The CA Health Checker common service provides a simple and consistent method for CA products to create health checks to run under the IBM Health Checker for z/OS. The IBM Health Checker for z/OS allows you to identify potential problems in your z/OS environment by checking system or product parameters and system status against recommended settings. CA has joined other vendors in creating checks for CA z/OS products.
To take advantage of this feature, you must have the following components configured and running on your system:
- Operating system must be z/OS 1.8 or higher.
- IBM Health Checker for z/OS must be active. This is distributed with every supported level of z/OS.
- CA Health Checker Common Service FMID CEF5C00 must be installed. This is available with post r11 SP8 apar RO05819. The following two Product Information Bulletins (PIBs) should be reviewed: RI05071 and RI05073.
The following are the 10 new Health Checkers added to CA TLMS:
1. TLMS_AUX_CUSHION_CRITICAL: This check will monitor the availability of AUX records in the CA TLMS VMF and will trigger an exception when the number of AUX records used exceeds a critical percentage. This check is intended to be a secondary check that triggers if the AUX record shortage warned about in check TLMS_AUX_CUSHION_WARNING has not been addressed. The default interval for this check is every 24 hours and the exception interval is every 15 minutes.
2. TLMS_AUX_CUSHION_WARNING: This check will monitor the availability of AUX records in the CA TLMS VMF and will trigger an exception when the number of AUX records used exceeds a warning level. The default interval for this check is every 24 hours and the exception interval is every 15 minutes.
3. TLMS_OPTION_NOTLMS: This check examines the setting of the NOTLMS option and creates an exception when NOTLMS=CONT. The NOTLMS option determines the action of its “tape open” intercepts when the CA TLMS address space is not active. These intercepts take control during tape open processing to control access to the tape file and capture information about the tape file. If the CA TLMS address space is not active it cannot perform these critical functions.
The NOTLMS option can be set to NOTLMS=ABEND or NOTLMS=CONT. When NOTLMS=ABEND, the tape intercepts will abnormally terminate jobs opening a tape file for input and reject tapes being opened for output.
When NOTLMS=CONT, the tape intercepts allow the tape open to continue and no information is captured about the file.
The default interval for this check is to run once when the CTS address space starts up and the exception interval is your system default.
4. TLMS_OPTION_PROTECT: This check examines the setting of the PROTECT option and creates an exception when PROTECT=SELECT. The recommended setting is PROTECT=ALL.
The default interval for this check is to run once when the CTS address space starts up and the exception interval is your system default.
5. TLMS_OPTION_RECOVRY: This check examines the setting of the RECOVRY option and creates an exception if RECOVRY=NONE or RECOVRY=SMF is specified. The recommended setting is RECOVRY=ALOG.
The default interval for this check is to run once when the CTS address space starts up and the exception interval is your system default.
6. TLMS_OPTION_SECOPN: This check examines the setting of the SECOPN option and creates an exception if SECOPN=NO is specified. The recommended setting is SECOPN=YES.
The default interval for this check is to run once when the CTS address space starts up and the exception interval is your system default.
7. TLMS_OPTION_SECURE: This check examines the setting of the SECURE option and creates an exception if SECURE=NO is specified. The recommended setting is SECURE=YES. This activates security calls. There are additional security related options that will need to be customized for you environment.
The default interval for this check is to run once when the CTS address space starts up and the exception interval is your system default.
8. TLMS_QUEUE_ACTIVE: This check monitors the status of the CA TLMS transaction queue and creates an exception if queue processing is stopped.
The default interval for this check is every 15 minutes and the exception interval is once per minute.
9. TLMS_VMF_ALOG_SEPERATION: This check determines whether the VMF and ALOG reside on the same disk volume and creates an exception if they do. An exception is not created if the CA TLMS recovery option is set to RECOVRY=NONE or RECOVRY=SMF.
The default interval for this check is to run once when the CTS address space starts up and the exception interval is your system default.
10. TLMS_VMF_UPDATE_NOT_POSSIBLE: This check monitors CA TLMS updates to the VMF to see if any volume chaining or other errors have occurred.
The default interval for this check is to run every hour. If an exception occurs the check clears the count of update failures.
CA TLMS has set up default values for the health check proccessing intervals and exception levels based on best practices and recommendations. These values can be modified to meet your environment's needs by either:
- Specifying desired defaults on POLICY statements in the HZSPRMxx member of your IPL Parmlib.
Or
- By using an MVS MODIFY command to pass the desired parameters to the IBM Health Checker for z/OS started task.
Some helpful manuals are:
- IBM Health Checker for z/OS User's Guide.
- CA TLMS Configuration Guide.
- Chapter 13 and Appendix F.