Managing Cross-System Command Traffic › Issuing Commands Through Indirect Command Routing

Issuing Commands Through Indirect Command Routing

On z/OS systems, CA MIC provides the Intersystem Communication Facility (ICMF) through which you can route commands between systems that are not directly connected to each other, but are connected through VTAM. This is called indirect routing. If any of the z/OS systems you communicate with hosts an ICMF connection to some other system, you can send commands through the z/OS host to that other system. Also, users on that other system can send commands through the z/OS host to your z/VM system.

For example, if systems A and B are communicating through a DASD control file, and systems B and C are connected through ICMF, you can issue a command from system A to C, using system B as the intermediary. System A receives the response to the command executed on system C.

Also, you can use indirect command routing to issue commands between systems that use different control files. Although you can use indirect routing along with direct CA‑L-Serv routes, you can use indirect routing instead of CA‑L-Serv routes when you do not want to create more CA‑L-Serv routes.