FEATURES
If you are responsible for production system and the delivery of CICS service to users, Then AUTOMON®/CICS is a package you cannot do without. Many MVS sites achieve a CICS availability of over 99% and yet this is not good enough; someday CICS will crash. Change application, systems and configurations occur all to frequently, often daily. Even with the very best change control, requiring extensive system programmer coverage. Peak loads continue to increase up to the point of system stress and extended response time.
Why should the user suffer?
Why should you take the blame?
Previously, tools used after the event could have been be used to prevent the incident. AUTOMON®/CICS prevents CICS crashes, stress situations and extended response times AUTOMATICALLY. With AUTOMON®/CICS the user sees no fault, no degradation of service. AUTOMON® automatically handles all problem situations. Post event reporting allows your system programmer to remedy the detected problem at a later time. The prime concern of AUTOMON®/CICS is to buy you insurance, while at the same time reducing system programmer load and easing change control. While the package may be readily justified on the latter two items, it is your peace of mind that really counts.
OPTIONS
AUTOMON®/CICS has the following optional components:
• AUTOMON®/LogAnalyzer
• AUTOMON®/RDO
• AUTOMON®/Batch
• UCCF®/Server
JUSTIFICATION
AUTOMON®/CICS reduces CICS system outages via early detection of critical system problems and dynamically corrects them. AUTOMON®/CICS offers many services to assist in the detection and processing of exceptional and abnormal conditions during the execution of the CICS system. When AUTOMON® discovers an abnormal condition, it does a great deal of checking for storage corruption, loops and various other exceptional conditions. Once it identifies the CICS system problem, it will diagnose the symptoms and take corrective actions immediately to prevent system crashes, enhance system availability and improve system performance. AUTOMON®/CICS continuously captures significant activities and conditions of CICS, VTAM, VSAM and other operating systems. AUTOMON®/CICS will then periodically evaluate overall system performance objectives and then set severity stages (normal, warning and critical).
In normal processing, AUTOMON®/CICS offers maximum efficiency by allowing all incoming and outgoing transaction requests to be processed up to the HIGH threshold values which are preset by the systems programmers. This is known as the Green Flag Stage.
If the system is experiencing a performance problem, AUTOMON®/CICS notifies the system console operator as to its cause. Simultaneously, it reduces the incoming transaction flow by decreasing threshold values until the performance problem is resolved. This is known as the Yellow Flag Stage.
In a critical performance environment - system loop, short on storage, maximum tasks, resources deadlock, permanent ECB wait, storage violation, etc. - AUTOMON®/CICS will immediately notify the system console operator of the precise cause and will wait for the Action Cycle to expire. The Action Cycle is pre set by your systems programmer. After expiration of the Action Cycle, AUTOMON®/CICS takes corrective actions to relieve the problem. This is known as the Red Flag Stage.
AUTOMON®/CICS' behavior corresponds to CICS/VS. When CICS is experiencing a system abend condition, a repair subtask will activate automatically to take corrective actions to prevent a system crash. All key virtual storage areas will be checked and repaired. After the completion of the recovery stages, the control task will give control back to CICS (dispatcher domain) for the continuous process.
Some of AUTOMON®/CICS' features include detection, investigation and correction of Loop conditions, System crashes, Storage violation conditions and Short on Storage conditions. It also addresses additional performance concerns automatically by altering the MXT, AMXT and Cushion size values dynamically for maximum processing based on resource availability, self detection temporary storage shortages, capturing MRO/ISC link pending, notifying the user of VSAM or VTAM related resource dead-lock conditions and preventing various types of CICS system abends which include U405, U601, U602 and U615. These are but a few of AUTOMON®/CICS capabilities.
AUTOMON®/CICS provides the following major functions:
• System loop detection and application loop correction
• Prevention of short on storage and reduction of program compression cycles
• Adjusting the MXT, AMXT and Cushion Size values dynamically
• Relief for system stress conditions
• Storage Violation detection and Correction
• Automatic recovery of System/User Abends. (U305, U409, U602, U615, etc.)
• Average transaction rate, file I/O rate, VTAM I/O rate and aux temporary storage request rate capturing.
• Detection of exception and degradation conditions
• Automatic logging of CICS changes
• Monitoring of multi-CICS system activities through CICS and TSO/ISPF
• On-line access to messages and abend codes
• Logging facility (History Database)
• On-line generation of AUTOMON ® /CICS system table
• AUTOMON®/CICS capabilities
• CICS/ESA support
• No APF authorization required
• No IPL is required to install the product
• No user SVCs and no operating systems exits