IBM Z® System Automation is a NetView-based application that provides a single control point for a full range of system management functions. It plays a crucial role in supplying high-end automation solutions. IBM Z System Automation monitors, controls and automates an extensive range of system elements spanning your enterprise's hardware and software resources.
IBM Z® System Automation is a policy-based, self-healing, high-availability solution designed to optimize the efficiency and availability of critical systems and applications. It reduces administrative and operational tasks, customization and programming effort and automation implementation time and costs associated with Parallel Sysplex and policy-based automation. Using tight integration with Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS), IBM Z System Automation provides sophisticated disaster recovery capabilities for IBM Z systems.
Summary of changes and updates to Z System Automation
Gain flexible, cluster-wide, policy-based self-healing availability of IBM Z systems and IBM Parallel Sysplex clusters.
Get advanced application disaster recovery capabilities using IBM Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS).
Improve cross-team collaboration and reduce problem resolution time by integrating ChatOps tool into Slack®, Microsoft® Teams™ or Mattermost®.
Attain optimized application health and system performance with goal-driven automation. Get enterprise-wide automation and control of IBM Z systems hardware.
System Automation can integrate with Red Hat® and Ansible®, provide Zowe™-conformant REST APIs and command line interfaces and stream messages to Apache Kafka.
Use the modern Service Management Unite dashboard user interface to manage and automate multiple Parallel Sysplex and Linux applications.
Use high availability and automated operations support for IBM Z systems and IBM Parallel Sysplex clusters through flexible, cluster-wide, policy-based self-healing. Use IBM Z System Automation to start, stop and recover applications, systems and sysplexes. You can also automate applications across multiple sysplexes from a single console.
Employ advanced application disaster recovery capabilities using IBM GDPS to manage remote copy configuration storage subsystems. You can also minimize outages with fast, reliable automatic recovery.
ChatOps is a model that integrates people, tools and processes into a collaboration platform so that teams can efficiently communicate and easily manage their workflow. IBM Z ChatOps supports Z environments by including a chatbot that gives users access to information from Z systems management tools directly into Slack®, Microsoft® Teams™ or Mattermost®. Quickly notify the IT operations team about alerts from IBM Z applications.
ChatOps also integrates with IBM Service Management Unite for broad access to IBM Z data, enabling chat users to drill down into web-based dashboards with additional information. With Z ChatOps, incident resolution can be accelerated, and next-gen IBM Z operators can be onboarded faster.
Optimize system health and performance by applying goal-driven automation to simplify operations, minimize costs and support business goals. Proactively managing availability through performance-driven automation can reduce automation implementation time and cost. Leveraging automated alert notification and escalation can also improve problem resolution.
Monitor and control enterprise-wide processor hardware operations, including powering multiple target processors on and off, resetting them and performing all relevant system management tasks. Respond to messages, monitor status, detect and resolve wait states and manage your overall IBM Z system capacity.
Manage and control automated applications running on multiple Parallel Sysplexes and related non-z/OS systems with the Service Management Unite Dashboard. Take advantage of modern, customizable dashboards to monitor and operate apps, giving you a single control point. Use graphical views to understand the relationships of your automated applications easily. View z/OS system logs, exceptional messages and messages streamed from the System Display Facility (SDF). Gain advanced built-in problem analysis and resolution capabilities. Trigger automation functions to start, stop, recycle or move components or issue system commands on any connected z/OS system without having to open and log on to a different screen.
Automate newly deployed resources, like IMS or CICS regions, leveraging user-defined application templates and creating new resources dynamically whenever needed quickly and safely. Apply your company-defined rules and constraints for the automation of resources in the template definition so the automated resources that are dynamically added will be compliant and audit-ready.
Take advantage of Zowe-conformant application programming interfaces (Restful API) that enable better integration with hybrid cloud applications.
IBM Z System Automation provides a set of REST APIs to manage dynamic resources and an out-of-the-box integration with Red Hat® Ansible®. This integration allows developers to provision new workloads seamlessly integrated into the existing automated operations. REST APIs also allow programmatical control of automated applications and management of automation configurations in the sysplex.
Through the Zowe CLI plug-in, users can control IBM Z System Automation from a command line running on Microsoft Windows, Linux or Apple Macintosh operating systems. Messages in the System Display Facility (SDF) can be streamed to Apache Kafka to visualize the data in Service Management Unite or any other Kafka consumer. The automation policy can be exported in JSON format.
IBM Z System Automation provides pluggable, out-of-the-box sample policies for the z/OS base system, middleware products such as IMS, Db2, CICS, SAP and many more system products and infrastructure components. These sample policies are guided by best practices and designed for immediate high availability.
Review the user roadmap and requirements to plan for IBM Z System Automation.
IBM Z System Automation uses the S/390® interfaces that vendors of other processors capable of running z/OS have stated that they support.
Get the mandatory and functional prerequisites required to install and use IBM Z System Automation.
Get detailed instructions on how to use IBM Z System Automation specific to your role.
Learn more about IBM Z System Automation components, supported hardware and supported operating systems.
Explore videos that explain different usage scenarios for System Automation Info Broker.
Discover System Automation Info Broker used to forward SDF and user-defined message to Kafka, where the messages can be received and displayed by different consumers.
This video explains how to send SDF messages to Kafka.
This video explains how to send user messages to Kafka with the INGIBRKR command.
This video introduces the Job Log Monitoring capability enhancements that are delivered in IBM Z System Automation 4.3.
This video gives an overview of the new capabilities of System Automation Operations REST API V1.1, that are delivered in IBM Z System Automation 4.3.
Discover the ability of an immediate result check right after the termination of an asynchronous command that is routed from IBM Z Workload Scheduler to IBM Z System Automation.
Explore IBM Z Flexible Capacity for Cyber Resiliency as it pertains to temporary capacity offerings and discover how to manage temporary capacity with Processor Operations.
This video gives an overview and installation of System Automation Plug-in for Zowe CLI, which you can use to interact with Z System Automation from your preferred command line on Windows, Linux or Macintosh operating systems.
This video explains how to convert certain MOVE and SERVER application groups from model 1 to model 2 in seconds by using the new CONVERT or CV command.
Discover add-on policies added in IBM Z System Automation 4.3 for the components of z/OSFM, z/OS Container Extensions and System Automation Operations REST Server.
This course is intended for users who want to learn the following components to integrate System Automation operations with many other IT operation and management tools available on the market today, such as Zowe or Red Hat Ansible.
Browse the videos on new features and helpful how-tos to have a better understanding of IBM Z System Automation.
Review the software simulation labs that demonstrate how to use different components and features.
Single point of control for a range of service management functions.
Get visibility, control and automation of a large range of system elements spanning both the hardware and software resources of enterprises in a sysplex.
Bring mainframe management information and tasks from disparate sources into a single environment.
Combining mainframe and hybrid cloud metrics is central to successfully modernizing your observability platform.
Monitor and manage your z/OS environment with problem insights and open platform integration.
Maintain the highest degree of availability on IBM Z system networks.
Enable organizations to automate, plan and control the processing of complex system workloads.