Management Information › System Management Facility

System Management Facility

The sysplex identifies consoles with an eight‑digit logical name. Remote consoles (consoles attached to another CPU in the sysplex) cannot have a three‑digit address code.

The Operator Console Display shows the console’s logical name and the logical name of an alternate console, if there is one. You can define groups of consoles to run at the same time. The Operator Console Display shows you the ID of any group a console is part of.

The System Management Facility (SMF) is a component of the operating system that journals information about specific system events. These events include the beginning and ending of jobs and job steps, and the opening and closing of data sets. The SMF Analysis displays (1.5) format SMF records that you can use to account for system use and to analyze system performance. Several aspects of SMF are worth reviewing:

• SMF options, which are specified in the z/OS logical Parmlib parameter library
• SMF data sets or log streams, which collect SMF records
• SMF exits, which are user‑supplied programs that can cancel jobs, process accounting information, implement resource billing strategies, and so on
• The SMF records themselves

SMF can play an integral role in access control software processing. Both CA Top Secret and RACF use SMF to journal their records. CA Top Secret does so optionally. If the appropriate SMF controls, options, and exits are not implemented, the integrity of the access control software records is questionable.

SMF options define how SMF operates on the system. These options are read into the system at IPL. The operator can change these options with the SETSMF console command. The SMF Options Display shows you which SMFPRMxx member (where xx represents a two‑character suffix) of the logical Parmlib library was last used to specify the SMF options for the system.