Configuring a Resource that is Externally Stopped

Sometimes you will get an address space that, when you tell it to shut down, tells the address spaces that depend on it to close down as well. In System Automation terms, the dependent address spaces are externally stopped by the supporting address space.

To define an externally stopped address space, you need to set up three things:
  1. You need to tell the automation that the address space is externally stopped by changing the External Stop setting on the "APPLICATION INFO policy" from NEVER to ALWAYS or FINAL.
  2. You need to tell automation the address space that initiates the external stop by specifying a /StopsMe condition on the HasParent or HasPassiveParent link from the dependent resource to the supporting resource. If you don't have one of those relationships, you need to add an Externally/StopsMe relationship from the dependent resource to the supporting resource.
  3. You need to ensure you have an /AndStoppable condition on any stop or prestop dependency relationships from the supporting resource to the dependent resource. This has the effect of adding the dependent resources stop dependencies to the supporting resource and removing the requirement that the dependent resource be shut down itself. This is automatically handled if you just have HasParent/StopsMe or HasPassiveParent/StopsMe relationships. Relationships where you have to add it manually are MakeUnavailable and PrepareUnavailable.

If the application can tolerate having the dependent resource shutdown while the application is running, you can use External Stop FINAL. This tells automation that it should only expect the resource to be externally stopped if the supporting resource is also being shut down. If it is not included in the shutdown, then automation may use the specified set of shutdown commands to stop the dependent resource while the supporting resource is still running. If the application cannot tolerate this, then you should use External Stop ALWAYS, which means that automation will be unable to stop just the dependent resource.

There are some special behaviors for resources with External Stop FINAL: If the supporting resource abends, SA will expect the dependent resources to stop or abend as well. If they fail to do so by the time the supporting resource leaves the machine, SA will use the stop commands it has to bring the dependent resources down. This is to clean up for the eventual restart of the supporting resource.

During a shutdown, System Automation expects the dependent resources to enter AUTOTERM before the supporting resource leaves the machine. If this does not happen, it will assume the external shutdown by the supporting resource has failed and use its shutdown commands to stop the resource.