CICSPlex SM overview

The CICSPlex® System Manager element of CICS® Transaction Server for z/OS® is a system management tool that enables you to manage multiple CICS systems from a single control point.

Enterprises in which CICSPlex SM might be needed range from those running 10 or 15 CICS regions, to those running two or three hundred (or more) CICS regions: in the latest z/OS sysplex environment, having such large numbers of CICS regions to support a transaction processing workload is becoming increasingly common.

CICSPlex SM has the following key aspects:
CICSPlex SM conforms to the IBM® strategy for system management
  • It provides consistent creation and management of system management data.
  • It is an enterprise-wide system management application.
  • It supports increased automation of system management tasks.
  • It is structured into manager and agent components, has an enterprise information base, a coordination information base, and is based on a data model.
CICSPlex SM has many reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features
For example:
  • User application CICS regions are managed by a discrete controlling region that has no associated terminals or use application elements or components. There can be multiple instances of this managing region.
  • User access to CICSPlex SM functions is provided using a separate address space, of which there can also be multiple instances in an enterprise.
  • System management data is held separately in data-space caches, so that it is unaffected by what happens in both managing and managed CICS systems.
CICSPlex SM is secure
Even though CICSPlex SM has the potential to allow access to all of an enterprise's CICS resources from a single session, it ensures that security is not compromised. You can use a SAF-compliant external security manager to prevent unauthorized access to:
  • CICSPlex SM procedures and data
  • CICSPlex SM system management functions and the CICS resources they manage

Security checks that are usually performed by CICS (that is, CICS command checking and CICS resource checking) are performed instead by CICSPlex SM.