UNICOM AUTOMON/CICS - OS390

AUTOMON®/CICS - OS390

 

A State-of-the-Art Artificial Intelligence Product that "Thinks" as it Diagnoses Problems

 

OVERVIEW

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.

 

Once you activate AUTOMON in your system, it will self identify CICS system problems, investigate the actual cause of the problem and take corrective actions dynamically so that your CICS system remains available without interruption. Some of AUTOMON's features include detection, investigation and correction of: Loop conditions; System crashes; Storage violation conditions; SOS conditions and many others. It will also address additional performance concerns automatically by altering the MXT value dynamically (for maximum throughput based on resource availability), self detecting temporary storage shortages, capturing MRO/ISC link pending, self analyzing of VSAM and VTAM related resource dead-lock conditions, and preventing various types of CICS system abends which includes but is not limited to U405, U409, U602, U615, etc. These are but a few of AUTOMON's capabilities.

 

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 TS. 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.

FEATURES

• Loop detection
  System loop detection and application loop correction
• Short-on-Storage prevention
  Prevention of short on storage and reduction of program compression cycles
• Auto adjust MXT / AMXT
  Adjusting the MXT, AMXT and Cushion Size values dynamically
• Dynamic system relief
  Relief for system stress conditions
• Artificial Intelligence
  Storage Violation detection and Correction
• System / User abend settings
  Automatic recovery of System/User Abends. (U305, U409, U602, U615, etc.)
• Processing frequency logging
  Average transaction rate, file I/O rate, VTAM I/O rate and aux temporary storage request rate capturing.
• System degradation watch
  Detection of exception and degradation conditions
• CICS resource change log
  Automatic logging of CICS changes
• SysPlex and MRO/ISC compatibility
  Monitoring of multi-CICS system activities through CICS and TSO/ISPF
• On-line messages
  On-line access to messages and abend codes
• History database
  Logging facility (History Database)
• Central control panel
  On-line generation of AUTOMON system table
• Ease of use and installation
  No APF authorization required
  No IPL is required to install the product
  No user SVCs and no operating systems exits

BENETITS

• Reduce hardware & software costs by 50-60%
• Mitigate global CICS system outages
• Accelerate terminal user response time
• Automate CICS administration
• Dramatically reduce help desk volume
• Take control your critical host transaction server

5 MAIN COMPONENTS

• Control subtask
• Detective mechanism
• Repair subtask
• User action interface handler
• Logging facility