Operating MVS involves managing hardware like processors and peripheral devices (including the consoles where your operators do their work) and software such as the MVS operating system, the job entry subsystem, subsystems like NetView® that can control automated operations, and all the applications that run on MVS.
Planning MVS operations for a system must take into account how operators use consoles to do their work and how you want to manage messages and commands. Because messages are also the basis of automated operations, understanding message processing in an MVS system can help you plan MVS automation.
The MVS environment at an installation can affect how you plan to meet your operations goals. Your MVS operating environment might be a single MVS system or a multisystem environment. Depending on the environment, operating MVS can involve different approaches to your planning tasks. For example, planning console security for a multisystem environment requires more coordination than for a single MVS system. But much of the planning you do for a single system can serve as the basis for planning MVS operations in a multisystem environment.
Single MVS systems can be part of multisystem environments like a sysplex or a JES3 complex. In a sysplex, MVS systems can share work and resources; messages and commands can flow from system to system so that communication among systems is also shared.