The CICSPlex SM environment

Before you begin to define your CICSPlex® SM environment, you must understand the components of CICSPlex SM, either because you have to define them or because they can affect the design of your environment.

Each CICS region that is managed by CICSPlex SM is called a managed application system (MAS). You define and manage MASs as part of a CICSplex. Every MAS in a CICSplex is managed by a CICSPlex SM address space (CMAS). More than one CMAS can manage the MASs in a CICSplex, but a MAS can connect only to one CMAS at any given time.

All CICSPlex SM components, resources, system management requirements, and the relationships between them, are held as objects in a data repository. You can manage these objects using one or more of the provided interfaces:

• The CICS Explorer® is an Eclipse-based tool that you can use to create, install, and manage the objects in the data repository.
• The Web User Interface (WUI) provides a Web interface to create, install, and manage the objects in the data repository.
• The batched repository-update facility provides a batch job to create CICSPlex SM resource definition objects.

In every CICSplex there is one CMAS that is defined as the maintenance point. The CMAS maintenance point is responsible for maintaining the data integrity of the objects in every data repository by synchronizing its data repository with the data repository of other CMASs. It performs this synchronization by using CMAS-to-CMAS links, which are typically used for routing management commands and data between CMASs.

The Web User Interface (WUI) server runs on a dedicated MAS. The Web User Interface server code must be at the same release level as the CICS region on which it runs and the CMAS to which it is connected.

You manage resource definition through Business Application Services (BAS). You can also use workload management (WLM), real-time analysis (RTA), and monitoring services to manage the CICSPlex SM configuration and gather statistical information.