Discovering and creating the system model

When you perform a discovery operation you import the discovered system information into a CICS® DA Project. The system information contained in the project is known as the system model.

About this task

Discovery and host names:

When discovery runs on an MVS™ image, the names of the TCPIP stacks are queried to obtain the primary IP address of those stacks. The USS 'host' service is used to query the domain name server and resolve the IP address to a name. If a name is returned, this name is passed to the CICS DA client. If no name is returned, then the IP address will be passed to the CICS DA client.

As this part of the discovery process runs on the MVS image, it might be that the name for the primary IP address is a locally administered one that is not visible to the client. If that is the case, then the client might need to have its TCPIP configuration altered, for example, by altering the client hosts file, to allow the CICS DA discovery phase to complete. If the discovered IP address does not resolve to a name on the server, and the discovered IP address is not reachable to the client workstation, then the discovery process will not complete successfully.

When you run discovery CICS DA submits a job via FTP to execute a discovery program.
Important: If your JES member name and your system name do not match and you are running a version of z/OS® prior to version 1.11, you must follow the procedure in the topic Discovering when JES member name and MVS system name do not match. instead of this topic.

The first thing the discovery program does is to identify all the MVS systems in the sysplex. You then select the MVS images on which to perform the next stage of the discovery process. The discovery program then looks at the regions that are running on each selected MVS image and identifies supported releases of CICS, and other running instances, such as CICSPlex® SM CMASes, Web User Interface servers, DB2® servers, WebSphere® MQ servers, CICS temporary storage servers, CFDT servers and NC servers.

The discovered information is returned to the client and is used to populate the model in the CICS DA project. The discovery might take a long time depending on the number of MVS images in your sysplex and the number of subsystems discovered.
Note: If a system, CICS region, or one of the other instances is not active, it will not be discovered; only active instances are discovered. CICS DA discovers both managed and unmanaged CICS regions, but it does not discover any associated resources for the unmanaged CICS regions.

This task creates a CICS DA project, performs a discovery operation, and imports the systems information into the model. You must have a CICS DA connection defined.

Procedure

  1. Open the CICS Deployment Assistant wizard. To do this, perform one of the following actions:
    • Click the New icon The New icon. Expand the CICS Deployment Assistant tree and click CICS Deployment Assistant Project.
      A screen capture of the New wizard showing the CICS Deployment Assistant item expanded and showing the CICS Deployment Assistant Project item
    • Click the Create Deployment Assistant project icon The create sysplex project icon in the CICS Explorer™ menu bar.
    • Right-click in the white space of the Project Explorer view. Select New > Project and in the New Project window, expand the CICS Deployment Assistant tree and select CICS Deployment Assistant Project. Optionally, to assist in locating the Project wizard, you can type deployment in the text field. Click Next.
  2. In the Create CICS Deployment Assistant Project wizard enter a project name. By default, the project that you create is saved in your CICS Explorer workspace on your local workstation. However you can save it in a different location. For example, if you save the project on a network drive, the information can be viewed by multiple users. The default project location is displayed in the Location field. If you want to create the project in a different location, clear the Use default location check box and specify the new location.
    Note: Before you specify a new location you should create a specific folder for the project at the chosen location. Eclipse assumes that the location you specify is the folder that will contain the project. If at a later time you decide to delete the project, Eclipse deletes the folder and all the contents. If the folder you chose was one that contains other files, these files are deleted as well as the CICS DA project files.
  3. If you have an active CICS DA system connection, the system name is displayed in the connection field and the connection icon is green. If the connection is not active, or you want to connect to a different system, click the down arrow next to the system connection icon and click the DA system connection name. If this is the first time you are connecting to the system in this session, you are prompted for your password.
  4. Click Discover MVS Images. CICS DA starts the first stage of the system discovery, which is to find all the MVS images in your sysplex. When CICS DA has found all the MVS images it displays them in the wizard as shown in the following screen. Images with a red "x" in the icon indicate that you do not have the authority to access the image.
    A screen capture showing discovered systems in the Create CICS Deployment Assistant Project wizard. The last image in the list has a red x in the icon indicating that you are not authorized to access it.
  5. Using the Shift or Ctrl keys select one or more MVS image names that you want to include in your system model, and click Add. You can add the MVS images one at a time or all together. Each time you add an image, discovery takes place on the image.
  6. The discovery is performed on each MVS image sequentially. When the discovery is complete for each MVS image the image is moved across to the section on the right and the discovered instances are shown. The following screen capture shows a completed discovery for two MVS images.
    A screen capture showing the discovered system information for the images selected (MVS26 and MVS27) in the right of the view.
    When all discovery is complete click Finish to import the discovered systems into the system model in the project.

Results

The model is created and is shown in the DA Projects view. For details of the DA Projects view, see the topic DA Projects view.