IBM z/OS Consolidated Service Test: Our Mission

Our mission is to provide a consolidated, tested, and recommended set of service for z/OS and key subsystems on a quarterly basis with published results. This means that when you order your current service deliverable, you'll receive and install one recommended service package with a tested level of service for all these products.

How we do our testing

We test in a customer-like production sysplex environment in an IBM test lab and are continuously improving our CST test environment. We run batch and data-sharing applications that exploit and stress the latest functions with up to two levels of subsystems on three levels of z/OS systems. As we test, we observe how each product runs and how they interact in this environment. We report problems to the IBM Support Center. We have the following FMIDs installed on our systems. For more information about our environment, see our CST Quarterly report(PDF,161KB).

We have a quarterly CST test cycle:

Every quarter, we start our testing by installing all service from the prior quarter in addition to any new releases or products. We run our existing regression workloads/recovery scenarios. We also define new workloads/test scenarios that will exploit the new products/releases that may have been installed. During the second month of the quarter, we install monthly service, run regression workloads/test scenarios, identify problems and install fixes. In the final month of the quarter, we install monthly service, run regression workloads/test scenarios in a high stress environment. Finally, at the end of the quarter, we publish our results in the CST Quarterly report(PDF,161KB).

At the end of each month, between quarterly recommendations, we provide a delta recommendation for customers whose preventive strategy requires more frequent maintenance updates. The monthly recommendation supports the most recently published CST quarterly recommendation. It includes HIPER and PE fixes that have been installed at the beginning of the month and tested for the duration of the month.

RSU and CST

The IBM designation of RSU contains the consolidated, tested, and recommended set of service for the z/OS platform. All the service for the CST products included in the RSU have been tested in our environment for at least one month. RSU offers you:

• Better testing of maintenance
• Maintenance recommendations from participating product experts
• One consistent maintenance recommendation across the platform

For additional information, see:

• Flash 10106 on the Washington Systems Center technical support Web site.
• z/OS Preventive Maintenance Strategy to Maintain System Availability.

Web updates

As quarterly and monthly recommendations become available, we plan to update this web site, so make sure you check back with us! Each quarter we plan to update all service while each month, we plan to update the HIPER and PE PTFs we're recommending.

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