Cloud-enabling CICS Transaction Server for z/OS

What is a platform?

Platforms enable the creation of agile service delivery run times. CICS regions can be grouped as platforms for rapid application deployment, decoupling applications from the underlying topology and increasing flexibility. When you start regions in a platform, applications are deployed to them without any further interaction from a system administrator. Reliability is increased through automatic resource validation, provisioning, and de-provisioning. Platforms can be managed dynamically by applying policies during run time.

Platforms build on the foundations of CICSPlex® SM topology definitions, such as CICS system groups (CSYSGRP). The operations to deploy and manage both platforms and applications are built on the single-point-of-control capabilities of CICSplex. You must deploy CICSPlex SM to get full use of CICS cloud enablement features.

For more information, see How it works: Platforms.

What is an application?

In the context of cloud, an application combines disparate application resources. As an application, these resources can be managed as a single entity. This entity can be versioned and rapidly moved through the development, test, and production lifecycle. Using applications improves the management of dependencies, and entire applications can be measured for resource usage and internal billing. Applications can be managed dynamically by applying policies during run time.

For more information, see How it works: Applications.

What are policies?

You can have automated control over critical system resources with CICS policy task and system rules. For example, task rules can be defined to set thresholds such as the number of file requests performed by a task, storage used by a task, or processor time used by a task. When the threshold is exceeded, one of a number of automated actions can be performed: issue a message, abend the task, or emit an event that can trigger further actions. Policies can be applied dynamically during run time.

For more information, see CICS policies.

What are CICS bundles?

A CICS bundle is a directory that contains artifacts and a manifest that describes the bundle and its dependencies. CICS bundles provide a way of grouping and managing related resources.

CICS bundles also provide versioning for the management of resource updates, and can declare dependencies on other resources outside the bundle. Application developers can use CICS bundles for application packaging and deployment, business events, and services. System programmers can use CICS bundles to define CICS policies.

For more information, see Defining CICS bundles.

Building a cloud solution

Let's look at who is involved in building a CICS cloud solution and the resulting topology. Figure 1 shows how different roles work together to build up the solution. Figure 2 shows the system topology and the main artefacts that are involved.

The topology below is for one version of an application. If you use multi-versioning, see an equivalent diagram in How it works: Multi-versioning applications.

The system administrator used projects in CICS Explorer® to define the platform and package the application. The projects are exported to the zFS platform home directory. The system administrator also created PLATDEF and APPLDEF definitions for the platform and application in the CICSPlex SM data repository. The PLATDEF definition is installed in the CICSplex to create a platform with a region type that contains the target CICS regions. The APPLDEF definition is installed in the platform to create CICS bundles for the application in the CICS regions, and the resources that are defined in the bundles are dynamically created in the CICS regions.

Platforms and applications: find the information that you'll need