z/OS Management Facility (z/OSMF) for zCX

The z/OS Management Facility (z/OSMF) interface is used to provision, deprovision, and otherwise maintain zCX instances. Specifically, zCX uses z/OSMF workflows to guide provisioning and maintenance of a zCX instance. Therefore, z/OSMF must be active in a system on the sysplex where you are deploying zCX. All systems in this sysplex must be defined in z/OSMF. To define a system in z/OSMF, go to z/OSMF Settings, then Systems Option. Any user who will be provisioning zCX instances needs access to both z/OSMF and z/OSMF workflows.

If you do not yet have z/OSMF configured on your system, refer to the z/OSMF Configuration Guide in the IBM Documentation.

The first step of the zCX provisioning workflow collects all the necessary variable values. The values can be provided manually or by specifying a z/OSMF workflow variables input properties file (more information on this below). A workflow variables input properties file can also be used for some of the variables, with manual changes to the values from the file directly in z/OSMF. After providing the necessary values, the workflow steps can be automated. The final step of the zCX provisioning workflow provides the z/OS console START command that can be used to start the zCX instance.

z/OSMF workflow variables input properties file

The workflow variables input properties file stores all the input values. The workflow extracts the values from the file, therefore saving the time otherwise required to manually input each one. A sample workflow variables input properties file can be found in the following location:

/usr/lpp/zcx_zos/properties/workflow_variables.properties

This sample file provides the same default values as the z/OSMF interface. It can be copied and customized according to your installation requirements.