Enterprise Edition V14.0.3

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ZD&T Enterprise Edition enables enterprises to host an IBM® Z distribution on low-cost Intel-based x86 machines. It creates an environment for mainframe application demonstration, development, testing, and education without Z mainframe hardware, enables z/OS®, middleware, and other z/OS software to run on Intel and other compatible computers, and emulates z/Architecture® with virtual I/O and devices. Enterprise Edition also provides a web-based interface. You can create and manage images from an existing Z or ADCD packages. Then, you can provision a z/OS instance that is running on an emulated IBM Z® hardware from a created image to your target environment.

With a flexible licensing method, ZD&T Enterprise Edition can be used on cloud, VMs, or in-housed physical 8086 hardware. The Enterprise Edition also comes with a single user license that is known as Authorized User (AU) license, or with a multi-user license that is known as the Resource value Unit (RVU) license. If you use a Rational® token license server to enable other IBM products, you can use the same licensing method for ZD&T.

ZD&T Enterprise Edition provides the following features.
  • An application development and testing environment that can improve development infrastructure availability and flexibility.
  • Current® levels of IBM z/OS software that give access to new runtime capabilities for development and testing for enterprises.
  • Mixed workload support for enterprises, which can help reduce the development costs.
  • An approachable and portable environment for education on Z for enterprises.
  • A web-based interface to extract, and manage the images, and provision instances from existing Z or ADCD packages.
  • Creating and managing images from various sources.
  • Provisioning images for developers and testers in a self-service automated way.
  • Monitoring the status and availability of all created assets and target environments.
  • Integrating with IBM Application Discovery (AD) to deploy the data sets that are identified by AD to the target machine (ZD&T).

Source environments

ZD&T Enterprise Edition can work with your source environments to extract and provision the necessary volumes or data sets that are required to target environments. The following source environment types are supported:
Genuine z/OS on IBM Z
ZD&T z/OS Extraction Utilities must be installed and configured on such a source environment to extract z/OS artifacts.
Existing z/OS instances provisioned by ZD&T
ZD&T z/OS Extraction Utilities must be installed and configured on such a source environment to extract z/OS artifacts.
Extended Application Developers Controlled Distribution (ADCD)
ZD&T Enterprise Edition also comes with the Extended ADCD package. The Extended ADCD package enables the enterprise users to use and develop their applications with the newest set of mainframe software packages, such as CICS®, Db2®, IMS, z/OS, and JES2. You can select the software packages that you need, and provision the packages out of Extended ADCD to the target environment. For more information about Extended ADCD, see Extended ADCD reference.
You can specify and configure source environments on the web server. For more information, see Adding source environments.

ZD&T z/OS Extraction Utilities

ZD&T z/OS Extraction Utilities is required only if you want to create components from IBM Z platforms, either the physical or emulated IBM Z platforms. It needs to be installed on one or more IBM Z platforms to allow ZD&T to use the IBM Z platforms as source environments to extract z/OS, CICS, and Db2 resources. For more information, see Optional: Installing ZD&T z/OS Extraction Utilities.

Target environments

A target environment is an Intel x86-compatible environment that is capable of running the ZD&T emulator, where you can run z/OS software by provisioning z/OS instances with ZD&T. The following target environments are available in this tool to which you can provision instances.

Emulator

The emulator provided with ZD&T, also known as IBM System z® Personal Development Tool (zPDT®), provides the ability to run genuine z/OS software on Intel x86-compatible systems by providing emulation of the IBM Z instructions and devices. For more information about setting up the emulator manually, see Optional (Legacy): Installing the emulator.

Web server

The web server provides role-based UI and API solutions for enabling component and image creation from source environments, and provisioning z/OS instances based on the created images to target environments.

The web server provides the following features:
  • Integrating with IBM Application Discovery (AD) to automate the identification of data sets for extraction.
  • Integrating with company LDAP account to enable administrators to set up accounts with minimum efforts.
  • Scheduling the extraction or provisioning for another date or time that you want.
  • Flexible functions to select required data sets or volumes from the source machine, and transfer the data sets or volumes to the target machine.
  • Providing REST API support, which enables you to integrate and automate the functions of the web server in your own environment.
  • The provisioning process can install ZD&T emulator, and make the system ready. You do not need to remember the ZD&T native commands.
For more information, see Setting up the web server.

Storage server

ZD&T Enterprise Edition stores extracted information on the intermediary storage machine, for example, FTP or SFTP server. Extracted information is never deleted from the storage server until the information is manually deleted, which enables you to provision as many as machines that you want based on your license entitlement. You need to prepare such a storage server and ensure enough storage on the storage server to hold the required artifacts.

License server

When you use the software-based licensing, the software-based license server provides a server for centralized management of license keys for one or more instances of ZD&T Enterprise Edition.

To prepare the software-based license server, install the server and authenticated license key files. The licensee is not authorized to activate the emulated Central Processors (CPs) that are used by a ZD&T instance except when the software-based license server is activated with a license key file and is accessible by the program, because it provides the proof of license entitlement. For other functions that are provided by ZD&T Enterprise Edition, license activation is not required.

Each license key file is generated and is entitled to a number of emulated central processors. Central processors are also known as CPs. A single instance of ZD&T requires at least 1 CP, and can run with a maximum of eight CPs. The number of CPs needed depends on the number of users and the types and amount of processing required. For more information about the number of CPs that is used with an instance, see section 2.3.4 "Performance" in the zPDT Guide and Reference.

The Enterprise Edition also comes with a single user license that is known as Authorized User Single Session (AUSS), or with a multi-user license that is known as the Resource Value Unit (RVU).

The following topologies describe the software-based license server and various components of Enterprise Edition.
Figure 1. The AUSS and various components of Enterprise Edition
Figure 2. The RVU and various components of Enterprise Edition

For more information, see Setting up the software-based license server.

Note: The web server, storage server, and license server can be configured on the same machine. If you want to use one machine, you need to have large storage on the machine.