Implementing system availability monitoring (SAM)

You are recommended to implement SAM as follows:

  1. Use the Time period definitions view to create time-period definitions (PERIODEF objects) for the expected availability times of each CICS® system to be managed by CICSPlex® SM. For example, if seven of your CICS systems should be active from 0800 hours through 1900 hours, create one time-period definition for that part of the day.
  2. When you define each CICS system to CICSPlex SM, supply the name of the time-period definition that defines the system's hours of availability.

These two actions are sufficient to activate SAM and to cause the default external notifications to be generated when a noteworthy condition occurs. As you can see, you can implement SAM as soon as CICSPlex SM is installed in your enterprise, and with very little additional effort. You are recommended to continue using SAM with the default notifications, at least until you have had an opportunity to see the default notifications of all SAM conditions. If you decide to customize any of the notifications, start by creating an action definition for one of the SAM conditions and apply it to a single CICS system to test the effects. When you are happy with the change, apply it to other SAM conditions and other CICS systems, as appropriate.

The overheads associated with SAM are not high, so you can activate it throughout the enterprise CICSplexes without affecting the general performance of CICSPlex SM or the CICS systems it manages.