Simplifying your installation

This article presents some tips for simplifying your installation. Refer back to this when you are running through the Customization Dialog, especially when setting up your first or practice run-time.

Naming servers, cells, and nodes for manageability

It is important to plan your system by visualizing the results desired before even installing the product. This is a part of good planning and leads to good management and effective use of your system. This effective kind of long term thinking is important down to the very details of the system, especially naming. Upon initial configuration of the first base Application Server, you will be asked to provide long names and short names for the servers, nodes, and cells. It is imperative that simple names are selected that can be easily tracked through the installation process.

In general these are the nomenclature "rules" with examples given to indicate best practices for naming:

Notice in the examples the same names are used for long name and short name for server, node, and cell. This is an easy way to remember the nomenclature appointed in your environment, while differentiating the long names by using mixed or lower case. When selecting server, cell, or node names, always avoid special non-alphameric characters because they are used as HFS directory names and are parsed in XML files that may have problems with special characters such as blanks, slashes, dashes, tildes, question marks, or underscores.

Simplifying proclib

WebSphere Application Server for z/OS V allows all the servers and location service daemons in a cell to be started with just three procs. This is radically different than in earlier releases of the Application Server, such as V4 where new procedures in proclib needed to be created for new servers. To utilize the same three procs without issue or complexity it is recommended that simple names, with understood meaning, be given, such as V5ACR, V5ASR, and V5DMN.

Simplifying WLM definitions

In the ISPF Customization Dialog, you are asked to specify a Cluster Transition Name. This Cluster Transition Name becomes the Workload Manager (WLM) Application Environment name, as well as the server_generic_short_name. Dynamic application environments are now supported, making it unnecessary to go into the WLM panels to define new application environments for each server. When selecting names in the Customization Dialog, it is suggested that simplification apply whenever possible to avoid overly confusing nomenclature later on. A simple example might be naming all the Cluster Transition Names(Application Environments) by appending V5CL, or some other such naming structure at the beginning of the name. This will simplify the RACF definitions for the CBIND and SERVER class profiles.

Simplifying RACF definitions

For an initial test configuration, it is unnecessary to set up complicated sets of RACF userids and profiles. It is easier to assign a single userid, such as V5USR, and a single groupid, such as V5GRP, for each user in a cell. Additionally, once you run the BBOCBRAJ job that produces the RACF definitions, the profiles can be tailored so they can be used for other servers without further RACF definitions. Here are some simple example RACF profiles for all servers with a short name beginning with V5SRV and application environments starting with V5CL:

Organize your port usage

In order to understand the levels of communication going on with your Application Server, it is important to be familiar with port assignments by default. See the article on z/OS port assignments for reference.

Use the ISPF Customization Dialog Effectively

While the ISPF Customization Dialog coordinates the specification of customized variables, it is not a remedy for careful planning and understanding of the z/OS environment. Here are some suggestions:

Note: A common mistake users make is to change any of the values on the Customization Dialog after generating the jobs and data and then attempting to make manual corrections to the target CNTL or DATA members. Don't attempt to do this, instead regenerate all the jobs and data. In the long run it will take far less time and energy.


Related tasks
Installing a practice runtime on z/OS
Related reference
z/OS port assignments



Searchable topic ID:   cinssimplifyz
Last updated: Jun 21, 2007 9:56:50 PM CDT    WebSphere Application Server for z/OS, Version 5.0.2
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