A platform provides a simple layer of abstraction to decouple
applications from the underlying complexities of a CICS® topology. You can set up a platform in
a CICSplex to provide a managed environment for application deployment.
You must use CICSPlex® SM to provide a
single system image of your CICS regions. Other features of
CICSPlex SM, such as Business Application
Services (BAS) and workload management, are not required.
About this task
To create a platform, you use the CICS Cloud
perspective in CICS Explorer®. This perspective
provides the views to manage the lifecycle of platforms, from creating the description in XML, to
deploying and managing the resources in CICS regions.
Because a platform is described in XML, you create it in a platform project and deploy it to zFS.
It is therefore important to set up the directory structure in zFS for each platform that you want
to create in your CICSplex. For more information, see Preparing zFS for platforms.
To set up a platform, follow these
steps:
You have a platform running in a CICSplex.
What to do next
After you set up a platform in your CICSplex, you can deploy
packaged applications on the platform. You can also add further quality
of service by deploying policies to control the environment. These
policies can apply to every region in the platform, or to particular
applications.