z/OS Management Services Catalog is now available as a new z/OS Management Facility (z/OSMF) task provided in APAR PH40810, with z/OS V2.5 PTF UI78078 and z/OS V2.4 PTF UI78079. Designed to transform how system programmers manage their z/OS environments, z/OS Management Services Catalog uses z/OSMF workflows-based services to provide a simpler, faster, and more effective way to complete z/OS management tasks and guide the next generation of system programmers.
Managing z/OS environments can be complex, especially for system programmers who are new to the platform. Routine tasks tend to be manual and involve institutional knowledge and processes that take years to learn. Simplifying these tasks and processes can save time and reduce errors, and lowering the learning curve can help system programmers who are new to the platform be productive faster.
z/OS Management Services Catalog addresses these challenges with an interface that enables experienced system programmers to capture complex tasks in consumable services. The services empower other system programmers to easily perform z/OS management tasks without the command line or operator console. This new z/OSMF task is a groundbreaking tool for creating, managing, and running these services.
IBM is providing an initial set of sample services to demonstrate how to create and use them to complete z/OS management tasks including:
- Create a zFS file system
- Expand a zFS file system
- Mount a zFS file system
- Unmount a zFS file system
- Replace an SMP/E RECEIVE ORDER certificate
- Delete a RACF user ID
- Delete an alias from a catalog
IBM collaborated closely with several z/OS clients to co-create z/OS Management Services Catalog. An experienced z/OS system programmer from US Bank says, "Nice to know that with z/OS Management Services Catalog, IBM is helping us manage our IT infrastructure by modernizing how our early tenure z/OS System Programmers perform z/OS management tasks to reduce the learning curve and boost their productivity.” Using the z/OSMF application, experienced z/OS system programmers like this client can create and manage their Catalog of customized services, each written with unique institutional knowledge, protocols, and processes meant to represent their best practices and internal standards.
As a layer on top of z/OSMF workflows, services allow z/OS system programmers to successfully and repeatedly complete z/OS management tasks with step-by-step guidance. There is also a History of each time a service runs, which records all changes to your systems.
“z/OS Management Services Catalog is unique in that it will help rookies like me, who come in with very little knowledge about how to execute a batch job, to accelerate our learning curve by providing services that include the required JCL to complete z/OS management tasks,” says an early-tenure z/OS system programmer at US Bank.
To learn more about z/OS Management Services Catalog, including instructions on how to get started, see the
z/OS Management Services Catalog content solution.