Effective use of SMP/E

This course teaches the use of SMP/E on z/OS.

This course is ideal for new systems programmers who will be responsible for using SMP/E to implement and maintain z/OS systems and their associated subsystems and products.

This course also has relevance for managers responsible for designing software maintenance strategies and systems programmers who require an update due to the recent changes and improvements within the z/OS maintenance environment.

Delegates should be familiar with z/OS and have a working knowledge of JCL and TSO.

On completion of this course, delegates will:

• Appreciate the importance of systems maintenance and design a maintenance strategy that best fits their installation.
• Understand the components of a system/product and the role that SMP/E has to perform to properly maintain that system/product.
• Be confident using SMP/E online dialogs and batch reports to make enquiries about the maintenance system and the SMP/E environment.
• Control the process of product installation and fix application to the maintenance system.
• Be able to use IBM’s Enhanced HOLDDATA to reduce the risk from known bad fixes.
• Know how to setup the SMP/E environment to best effect for multiple systems.
• Be able to copy necessary SMP/E components to complement the systems cloning process.

Overview of SMP/E
The SMP/E program and its major functions.
Maintenance application and the maintenance system.
The role of the DLIBs in the maintenance process.
SYSMODs and elements.
The role of the Consolidated Software Inventory (CSI), SMP/E Global, Target and DLIB zones.

SMP/E Data Sets
Consolidated Software Inventory (CSI) and SMP/E zones.
CSI/Zone structure options – pros and cons.
PTS, MTS, STS and the SCDS data set.
SMP/E Logging.
The SYSMOD data set.
JCL for running SMP/E.
Backup implications for the SMP/E environment.

Zone Contents
Global Zone contents, including:
• FMIDSET.
• ZONESET.
• OPTIONS.
• UTILITY.
• DDDEF.
• SYSMOD.
• HOLDDATA.
Target and Distribution Zone contents, including:
• TARGETZONE/DLIBZONE.
• DDDEF.
• MAC, SRC, MOD, LMOD, ASSM, HFS, etc...

On-line Enquiries and Reports
Using the SMP/E dialogs to make on-line enquiries.
Using the REPORT and LIST SMP/E command to run batch jobs reporting on the contents of the SMP/E environment.

Modification Control Statements
The statement types that may be included in the SYSMODs, including:
• ++VER, ++IF, and the product statements.
• ++HOLD/++RELEASE and enhanced HOLDDATA processing and reports.
• ++MOD, ++SRC, ++SRCUPDTE, ++MAC and ++MACUPDTE.
• ++ZAP, ++JAR, and ++HFS.

Setting up the SMP/E Environment
Setting up the SMP/E environment and ensuring all the necessary priming is completed before normal SMP/E processing may start. These actions are covered using both batch jobs and the administrative panels within the SMP/E dialogs.

SMP/E Processing
The SET command.
The three main processing functions of RECEIVE, APPLY and ACCEPT.
The functions of REJECT and RESTORE and CLEANUP.
General guidelines for SYSMOD processing conclude this chapter.

Additional SMP/E Control Statements
The ZONExx commands (including ZONECOPY ZONEEDIT and ZONERENAME).
UCLIN and JCLIN processing.
BUILDMCS and GENERATE processing.

Further SMP/E Topics
Maintenance strategy options.
The use of SAA (System Specific Alias) as used by the IBM ServerPac.
The use of IBM’s web-based service ShopzSeries for ordering products and service.
The use of IBM’s Internet Service Retrieval (ISR) to receive IBM maintenance over the web.
IBM’s service classification of RSU and consolidated service testing.