8. CA MICS NSM Integration (MTI) › 8.6 Considerations › 8.6.1 SYSIDs vs. Machine IDs

8.6.1 SYSIDs vs. Machine IDs

One area of variation between CA MICS and NSM Systems
Performance is the difference in length between the original
system identifier (ORGSYSID) and the machine ID.  CA MICS
limits ORGSYSIDs to four characters, whereas allows machines
to have names greater than four characters.

The ORGSYSID is significant because it, in combination with
the resource type, uniquely identifies the high and low
timestamp of the input data for CA MICS checkpoint
processing, which prevents the introduction of duplicate data
into the CA MICS database.

Part of the MTI Dictionary load process updates the MTI
Long-to-Short SYSID file (MTIL2S).  This file contains all
machine names encountered and an internally generated unique
ORGSYSID.  Note that this file is for documentation purposes
only and is not used by MTI.

By default, MTI assigns the first four characters of the
machine name to ORGSYSID.  In the event that ORGSYSID does
not contain sufficient uniqueness (i.e. several machines
start with the same four characters) MTI provides the
cccSYSID exit for you to reassign the long machine name to
the four character ORGSYSID.

Refer to Section 8.7.3 for details on how to implement
cccSYSID exit.

While it is best to assign a unique ORGSYSID to each machine,
the cost to manage a large number of systems can be
overwhelming.  The CA MICS Checkpoint contains one entry per
resource type, per ORGSYSID.  In very large configurations,
this combination may exhaust the maximum of 999 checkpoint
entries for a unit database.  To reduce demands on CA MICS
Checkpoint, the cccSYSID exit can be used to cluster machines
into a single ORGSYSID.

This configuration allows multiple machines to share the same
CA MICS Checkpoint information when CA MICS database update
encounters no data for MACHINE_A and data for MACHINE_B.

Note, however, that this configuration might result in
unexpected data loss.  Consider the following example:
MACHINE_A and MACHINE_B are assigned the same ORGSYSID MACH.
On a given day the CA MICS database update encounters data
from MACHINE_B but not from MACHINE_A.  CA MICS Checkpoint is
updated to show the high timestamp for ORGSYSID MACH to be
yesterday.  MACH is updated because cccSYSID assigns its
machine name (MACHINE_B) to MACH.  The next day, the input
data sets for MACHINE_A contain data from the past two days
whereas the input data sets for MACHINE_B contain data just
for the previous day.  The oldest data for MACHINE_A (two
days ago) will be dropped because the checkpoint indicates
that this data has already been processed based upon
ORGSYSID of MACH, assigned to both MACHINE_A and MACHINE_B.

Finally, MTI has been designed so that the machine is
inserted as part of the sort sequence ahead of the logical
SYSID, guaranteeing that the original machine is always
available for reporting purposes regardless of the ORGSYSID.