Simultaneous Session Reporting and Asset Tracking Reporting

IBM® Connect:Direct® utilizes Simultaneous Session Reporting and Asset Tracking to continually monitor server sessions, track metrics such as the high-water mark, generate SMF records to document the values, and generate audit reports with this data.

This feature is enabled by default and enables Connect:Direct administrators manage their server licensing requirements to:

• Help determine if the current usage of Connect:Direct servers is within the license entitlement levels and can prevent potential license violations

• Track usage of IBM Connect:Direct server and its neighbors and assist administrators decommission devices that are no longer accessing IBM Connect:Direct servers.

IBM Connect:Direct sets several important Global initializ ation parameters that supply values to process its various functions. For example, SESSION.HIGHWATER.SMF parameter is set to define a session expiration time. When this time period elapses, the Connect:Direct server records high-session limits, the time/date it occurred, and other additional information about the server itself such as, License type. This information is recorded as a SMF record into a zO/S standard facility, SMF and into its Statistics facility, Connect:Direct Server's Statistics to be utilized by IBM Control Center and other AIJ applications.

With release v6.1, Highwater Session Record (HW) is enhanced to provide additional information and generate a HW record once every 24-hours period based on Mid-night UTC. The Connect:Direct Server tracks the highwater session mark and records the environment related information such as zOS System Name, OS type, OS version, CD version etc. The Connect:Direct server will record the HW record to the statistic file based on mid-night UTC. For example, if the Connect:Direct server in US CDT the record is written at 19:00:00 versus if it is written in US EDT, at 18:00:00. Each Connect:Direct server will adjust this time based on its offset from UTC. The SELECT STAT command to format a report for this record type.

Note: Global initialization parameter SESSION.HIGHWATER.SMF is by default set to 60. To modify this and other related parameters such as, SERVER.TYPE and SERVER.MSU see, Global Initialization Parameters.

For example, Connect:Direct records and maintains the current session count internally and record this externally by writing the information to SMF record type 133. The SMF record type and the recording interval will be established at initialization time as specified with a new initialization parameter. Each Connect:Direct Server will record this information separately.

If the SMF record type of 133 is being used by another application, then you will need to specify a new SMF record type using the SESSION.HIGHWATER.SMF initialization parameter.

Post-processing of the SMF records will be done by a batch job, for which sample JCL and control cards are distributed in SDGAJCL that will produce audit reports from the data.

Additionally, this data is also recorded as a H2 and HW record type in Server Statistics. Use SELECT STAT command to format a report for this record type. For more information see, SELECT STATSTICS Command in IBM Connect:Direct for z/OS® User Guide.