SA z/OS : clarification on control file entry ACORESTART

Resolving The Problem

ACORESTART is actually not used for the case the customer was expecting, where an application abended and was restarted by SA. This does not cause ACORESTART commands to be submitted.

Entries defined for ACORESTART in the SA PDB are used for cases where you need to define one or more processes to take place if SA has been stopped and restarted while the application remained active.

When ACORESTART is defined in the MESSAGES policy entry for an APL or APL Class resource, then the command(s) defined via ACORESTART will be automatically submitted by SA when the resource is 'UP' and the SA NetView® agent is stopped and restarted for whatever reason.

It is generally used as a synchronization point if you need certain rexxes or commands to run when SA starts for specific APLs, or to perform a sort of health check on running APLs when SA starts to make sure they are still ok (ie. if SMS is defined as an APL in your policy, then maybe run a "MVS D SMS" to make sure that SMS is responsive and log the output to SYSLOG or NETLOG).

Additionally ACORESTART command(s) execute when INGAMS REFRESH is performed under certain circumstances:

a) a BUILD ALL is performed prior to the REFRESH
b) a BUILD MOD is performed prior to the REFRESH and an APL or APL class has been updated, or other PDB elements affect the APL/class involved

For example, let's for the moment assume a started task called ABCD is a defined resource in the SA PDB file (principle can be applied for an SA defined resource).

In our example, if you wanted to enter z/OS command 'F ABCD,CMD PARM' to do something on behalf of ABCD should SA be shutdown and restarted, then you would edit the SA PDB for the ABCD APL resource to define entry 'ACORESTART' in the MESSAGES entry type, and the command definition would be 'MVS F &SUBSJOB,CMD PARM'.

This will cause that command to be issued by SA when it starts and finds the ABCD resource is already active, and that is the design of the ACORESTART usage, or via INGAMS REFRESH under the circumstances listed above.

ANYSTART option
If customer is interested in having commands defined for any start type performed by SA (post IPL, abend, SA stop/start, etc) then consider reviewing and utilizing the ANYSTART policy definition, which became available in SA z/OS V3R5.