Assessing your readiness to install maintenance

Before you install any maintenance, or install a new IMS system, for that matter, you need to determine your readiness. This involves a careful risk assessment. This same principle applies to developing a maintenance strategy.

Numerous factors are involved in assessing your readiness to install maintenance, including the quality of the local test environment and the business cycle.

• Quality of the local test environment
  Several factors affect the quality of the test environment. Some questions to consider are these:

  • Are the software products such as RACF®, DFP, or z/OS® DFSMS used in your test environment in the same way they are used in production and do the levels match what is used in production?
  • Do you have a tool, such as Teleprocessing Network Simulator (TPNS), that enables you to perform stress tests to simulate peek production activity?
  • To what extent does the hardware used in your test environment match the production environment?
  • To what extent does the application software used in your test environment match the production environment?
  • Are test results closely monitored?

  These and other factors need to be considered to evaluate the quality of the test environment.

• Business cycle

  You must do everything you can during a critical business cycle, to ensure that IMS remains available. Therefore, avoid implementing maintenance to a production system during a critical business cycle.