It is no surprise that our digital world is relying more and more on Cloud computing; it has made a huge difference across the board for tech companies in their ability to efficiently run their applications and even their organizations as a whole. From a data perspective, DFSMS certainly understands the importance of supporting Cloud computing and the necessity of being able to access your data in cloud environments.
More and more z/OS clients are integrating cloud object storage into traditional disk and tape environments to create a hybrid storage architecture. These hybrid solutions are able to leverage the strengths of on-premises disk and tape storage while adding the intrinsic strengths of cloud solutions for backup, archive, and unstructured data.
Some of you may know that there are several DFSMS solutions already leveraging the use of Cloud Object Storage. There is Transparent Cloud Tiering (TCT) and the TS7700 DS8000 Data Object Store which minimizes MIPS by enabling DFSMS backup and archive without the data passing through z/OS. We also have OAM which allows users to store and manage unstructured data as objects to public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructures.
Today, a z/OS application doesn’t need to worry about whether the data it’s reading is coming from a Disk or Tape; we believe a z/OS application developer shouldn’t have to worry about the details of accessing the data in a Cloud Object Store either.
Now, we are introducing a new z/OS base component called Cloud Data Access, CDA, a game changing callable service (“method”) that provides a simple way to store any z/OS data directly onto cloud object storage. Let’s talk a bit more about what CDA is and why it should matter to you!
What is CDA?
CDA provides simple API access to objects in cloud object stores. Not only are there GET, WRITE, LIST, and DELETE actions, CDA also handles all of the painful, nitty gritty details for authenticating and communicating with the target cloud. CDA provides APIs and an ISPF application to securely store the cloud credentials needed to access the cloud object store; this means that the user will not have to enter the credentials during execution of the application, further simplifying the process.
CDA supports the use of S3 compatible IBM Cloud Object Storage, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Azure Blob storage, and Google Cloud Storage as well as BASIC, TEMPAUTH, and KEYSTONE authentication methods.
Why should you care?
Disk and Tape requires the data to be attached to your z/OS system, accessing Cloud object storage only needs a TCP/IP connection. Additionally, because it uses a REST API, any operating system can access cloud object storage with the correct credentials.
CDA opens new horizons for z/OS applications to ingest and share data with applications running in other environments such as cloud computing and distributed environments.
We know that modernization is important to your business and we understand that modernizing on the platform is more efficient and cost effective so CDA is a great way to start or continue your modernization efforts.
Getting started with CDA
The CDA APIs are being documented in z/OS 3.1 and will be supported for use on z/OS 2.4 and above (Note: z/OS 2.4 and 2.5 will only support S3). You can find CDA documentation in z/OS MVS Programming: Callable Services for High-Level Languages for more information and how to get started.
Not ready for CDA? Try GDKUtil*:
z/OS DFSMS also offers a JCL utility called GDKUtil that enables batch access to cloud objects. GDKUtil can be used to download or upload sequential data sets to the cloud.
If you’re not ready to fully jump in to using CDA, we recommend starting with GDKUtil.
You can also check out this blog from John Hogan of 21CS showing a user perspective and example for GDKUtil!
You can find more information on GDKUtil in the z/OS DFSMSdfp Utilities manual.
We would love to hear your feedback on CDA and GDKUtil, feel free to leave a comment below!
Make sure you keep an eye out for our incoming CDA Content solution page as well as our next blog post in the CDA series!
Author: Andrew Wilt - Cloud Data Access Product Owner
Editors: Alexis Ricci - z/OS DFSMS Product Manager, Barbara McDonald - z/OS DFSMS Product Manager
*Related APARs:
OA62472 – Web Toolkit
OA62318 – GDKUtil