Introduction › Introduction to CA MIM › Components and Facilities › CA MIM Driver

CA MIM Driver

The CA MIM Driver manages global activity of the product components by routing transactions across mainframe images through a common control file.

Global activity is managed by the routing of transactions across system images through either a small control file residing on a shared DASD volume or a virtual control file residing in private storage in the address space of a product on a selected master system.

The virtual control file architecture uses CTC devices to pass transaction data between z/OS and z/VM systems.

In a parallel sysplex environment with a CA MIM complex that is equal to or is a subset of the parallel sysplex complex, the control file can be placed in the coupling facility. This provides a significant performance enhancement through the reduction of I/O transfer times as compared to CTC, cached DASD, and non-cached DASD I/O operations.

CA MIM lets you define backup communication methods. This capability furnishes data centers with the redundancy needed to guarantee uninterrupted resource integrity as the operating environment changes or during hardware outages. While the product is running, migrations can be initiated between DASD control files, between virtual control files, or between DASD and virtual control files.

The CA MIM transaction processing architecture is based on a star configuration. With this architecture, every image needs only a single access to the control file to determine the global status of all managed resources. Frequency of access to the control file is based on the amount of resource activity on a particular image.

The CA MIM Driver can be defined as CA MIM address space control code, which supervises the activities of the CA MIM address space, regardless of which CA MIM facilities are activated.