Establishing Host Sessions › Understanding Console Management › SYSPLEX, MCS, and RCS Consoles › Console Processing for SYSPLEX, MCS, and RCS › MCS Consoles

MCS Consoles

When you configure z/OS, define the device addresses to be controlled by CA Automation Point as an MCS console. If you plan to use CA Automation Point to reply to IPL messages, define or set the first console (console ID 01) as a CA Automation Point-controlled session.

CA Automation Point recognizes an MCS session by the IEE612I or IEE512I message. The state script puts the console in non-delete mode and formats the messages to include time stamps and job names. The state script also deletes any existing display areas and issues a message telling CA OPS/MVS that CA Automation Point is active on this console. (For more information on AXCCOM, see the AXCCOMM.txt file.) CA provides a sample mcs.scr file with CA Automation Point.

Specify the consoles that are to receive the IPL messages by running the z/OS configuration program with the following statements:

IODEVICE ADDRESS=xxx,...
NIPCON=(xxx, ...other consoles... )

z/OS sends IPL messages to the first active console defined on the NIPCON parameter.

You can also set up alternate configurations and request one of them during IPL. For example, you may want to control your data center locally on weekdays and remotely on the weekend (for remote IPL). The following example shows one way that you can set up alternate configurations for CA Automation Point:

For normal operations— Set up the standard configuration using console 01, a local 3279, as the first NIP console.

For remote operations— Set up the alternate configuration using console 02 connected to CA Automation Point as the first NIP console.

A message on an MCS console might look like this:

*09.28.38 X2345678 *093 IEF355A INITIATOR TERMINATED, RESTART

When processing this message, CA Automation Point sets the following environmental variables as follows, and passes the message to rules for processing: