The Automation Manager’s started task

Naming conventions

The name of your Automation Manager started task is confirmed by your system programmer after the Configuration Assistant is used. The Configuration Assistant generates the INGEAMSA start procedure by default, which is used in the following examples.

Starting the Automation Manager

The Automation Manager is started with a standard MVS Start command:

S INGEAMSA,JOBNAME=AM,SUB=MSTR

More parameters are passed at run time. They are documented in "Starting and Stopping SA z/OS" in IBM Z® System Automation User's Guide. Your system programmer sets up the task so that no additional parameters are required.

Although the SUB=MSTR parameter is not strictly required, you must use this parameter if you are going to have SA z/OS automate the start, recovery, and shutdown of JES and other subsystems that run the SUB=MSTR parameter. You can omit it for testing, although you must conduct a test with it applied, as the SUB=MSTR parameter is a more restrictive environment for JCL.

Starting a secondary automation manager

The Automation Manager is designed to run in a HOT backup configuration. The first started task becomes the primary manager and runs automation. A second instance of the task is then started to provide a failover capability if the primary Automation Manager fails.

Your system programmer advises you whether this step is required. Typically it would be handled by SA z/OS itself, but under some circumstances it might be manually required. A typical start command for it would be as follows:

S INGEAMSA,JOBNAME=AM2,SUB=MSTR

The command runs a second instance of the Automation Manager under a different job name.

Again, the SUB=MSTR parameter can be omitted for testing.

Stopping the Automation Manager

To stop the Automation Manager to recycle it, use command: P AM.

To stop the Automation Manager when you cannot wait for work in progress to be completed, use:

F AM,STOP,IMMED or F AM,STOP,FORCE

If you are shutting down the system, SA z/OS is able to shut itself down, but if it cannot shut down, use command: F AM,STOP,DEFER.

This command instructs the Automation Manager to keep running until the agent connected to it has shut down and then the Automation Manager stops itself.

During production use, you usually do not have to stop the Automation Manager. It should send itself a STOP,DEFER before it shuts down the NetView component. During testing, you might have to shut it down manually.

Additional operations

There are other commands that the Automation Manager responds to. They are documented in "Starting and Stopping SA z/OS" in IBM Z System Automation User's Guide.