Using IBM z/OSMF to automate IBM MQ

The IBM® z/OS® Management Facility (z/OSMF) provides system management functions in a task-oriented, web browser-based user interface with integrated user assistance, so that you can more easily manage the day-to-day operations and administration of your mainframe z/OS systems.

By streamlining some traditional tasks and automating others, z/OSMF can help to simplify some areas of z/OS system management.

Resources can be provisioned or de-provisioned, at a click of a button, from a user provided portal. z/OSMF provides REST APIs to help with this task.

The sample marketplace portal supplied with z/OSMF can also be used to provision and de-provision resources. Alternatively, more experienced users can use the z/OSMF Web User Interface (WUI).

This section assumes that you understand z/OSMF, but if you are unfamiliar with z/OSMF you should read Getting started with z/OSMF . Alternatively, you can access this section from the z/OSMF WUI online help.

You should familiarize yourself with z/OS Cloud configuration, that is:

Cloud Provisioning - Resource management services
Workload Management - see IBM z/OS Management Facility Programming Guide for more information.
Getting started - see Getting Started Tutorial - Cloud

z/OSMF 2.2 introduces role based activities and tasks, so it is important that you understand concepts like:

domains
administrators
approvers
tenants
templates
instances
workflows

and so on.

Sample IBM MQ z/OSMF workflows and associated files are provided, and can be installed as part of the IBM MQ for z/OS UNIX System Services Components feature. The installation process for this feature, and the directory and file structure, are described in the IBM MQ for z/OS Program Directory. For download links for the Program Directories, see IBM MQ for z/OS Program Directory PDF files.

The sample workflows are written in XML and demonstrate how to automate the provisioning (creation) or de-provisioning (destruction) of IBM MQ queue managers, channel initiators, and local queues, and how to perform actions against the provisioned IBM MQ resources. Steps within the workflows submit jobs (JCL), run REXX execs, process Shell scripts, or issue REST API calls.

The samples are designed to illustrate the types of function that can be achieved using z/OSMF. It is anticipated that z/OSMF workflows will generally be used to provision resources and actions like put or get message will, in essence, be performed using IBM MQ applications.

You can run the sample workflows as supplied, provided the workflow variable properties have been set (as discussed in the following sections), or you can customize them as required. You might prefer to write your own workflows to perform additional function. Before running the sample workflows see:

Sample workflow applications are provided to: