Upgrading

Upgrading is about moving what you have today to new capabilities, whether those are in a whole new release or supplied as service on your existing release. You can upgrade your whole environment, or you can run two versions concurrently. You can also apply new capabilities during a release, known as continuous delivery, by applying service that provides those capabilities. This section of the documentation explains what you need to do to migrate from your current release to a higher release. This information applies to all currently supported releases of CICS® TS. It also retains upgrading information relating to end-of-service releases, but be aware that it reflects changes only up to the date when a release was withdrawn from service (end-of-service).

Advantages to upgrading

Typical CICS Transaction Server for z/OS® (CICS TS) features being improved and made available with each release include:

  • Improved capacity, performance, constraint relief, hardware exploitation, and better documentation
  • Consumability and productivity improvements, such as an easier installation process, new off-line tools, and runtime improvements
  • Removal of dependencies, such as those capabilities that were previously delivered in CICS TS SupportPacs and CICS TS Feature Packs being moved into CICS TS base code
  • Better support for open standards, in particular relating to TCP/IP and web services

Having CICS at up-to-date release levels in your whole environment allows you to be ready when projects need new features, rather than waiting for projects to need new features and risking delay in those features while you implement an upgrade.

Approaching an upgrade

When you upgrade, you go through the following activities:
Table 1. Activities in an upgrade project
Activity Find more information
Assess the new release or continuous delivery capability.

During the system software maintenance cycle, you can selectively roll out discrete additions of functions that are made available through CICS continuous delivery, on specific CICS regions or across CICSplexes.

 What's New and the Announcement letter. For features that are available on existing releases through service, see CICS continuous delivery features.
Set up the upgrade project, bringing together the team of stakeholders, understanding the drivers and constraints for your situation, and starting to build a plan of activities. Planning to upgrade
Check the prerequisites of the new release and compatibility with other products that you use. Planning to upgrade
Review your regions, applications, vendor products, and service levels, to identify the areas that are affected by the upgrade and to ensure that your plan has full coverage. Planning to upgrade
Assess the impact of changes to CICS on your configuration. Changes between releases
Install the new version of CICS TS. Installing
Upgrade your configuration. Upgrading to the new release
Extend your newly-upgraded environment by starting to use the new capabilities of the release What's New provides links to further documentation for each of the new features.