System Availability Monitoring (SAM)

CICSPlex® SM’s system availability monitoring (SAM) function monitors CICS® systems during their planned hours of availability. If any of a set of predefined conditions occurs while a CICS system is being monitored, CICSPlex SM sends out external notifications at the start of the condition and also when it is resolved. The conditions are:

SAMOPS
Start of changeThe CICS system ( CICS TS,) is not available.End of change
SAMSOS
A CICS/ESA dynamic storage area (DSA) is short on storage.
SAMSDM
A CICS/ESA system dump is in progress.
SAMTDM
A CICS/ESA transaction dump is in progress.
SAMMAX
CICS/ESA or CICS/MVS has reached maximum tasks.
SAMSTL
Start of changeOne or more tasks in a CICS/ESA or CICS TS system are stalled because of contention for resources such as DBCTL, DL/I, transient data, files, journals, and temporary storage .End of change

For example, if CICS system AORPAY2 must be active from 0900 hours to 1200 hours and CICSPlex SM finds it inactive at 0930 hours, CICSPlex SM issues external messages by default. A typical response, from the CICSPlex SM operator or from an automation product, would be to try to restart the CICS system, or perhaps to start another.

Customizing the SAM external notifications

When any of the SAM conditions occurs, CICSPlex SM issues an external message by default. Each of the SAM conditions has a default severity and priority value that determines the position of the external message, relative to other external messages, in the EVENT view. For example, the SAMTDM condition has a severity of HW (High Warning) and a priority of 128, whereas the SAMSOS condition has a severity of HS (High Severe) and a priority of 255 (the highest priority), so SAMSOS precedes SAMTDM in the EVENT view.

You can customize the default SAM notifications for any CICS system by creating a CICSPlex SM action definition. Using an action definition, you can change:

You can also use the action definition to request that CICS TS systems affected by a condition are to be cancelled and restarted using the MVS automatic restart manager (ARM). This might be a suitable automation action for the SAMOPS condition, for example.

The default severity and priority values of the SAM conditions, and instructions for changing them using a CICSPlex SM action definition, are included in CICSPlex System Manager Managing Resource Usage.

Automation and SAM

An automation product, such as AOC/MVS or NetView, can intercept SAM notifications and take corrective action, such as starting up or shutting down a CICS system, disabling a transaction, or requesting a dump. For example, if a CICS system becomes unavailable, one of the automation products could attempt to restart the system, or perhaps start another.

However, most of the SAM notifications relate to actual problems that are already having an effect on users, so your scope for preventive action is small. Consequently, the best automation option for most SAM conditions is usually to request a dump, which can provide more information about a problem and its causes.

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