Automating System Initial Program Load (IPL) › Automate a z/OS IPL

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Automate a z/OS IPL

You can use CA SOLVE:Operations Automation to automate the IPL of your system. The product can speed up the IPL procedure by automatically entering input that requires operator intervention. It responds to the status messages, reducing the chance of error.

Important! Do not attempt to automate the IPL procedure until you are completely familiar with the product.

A region must be running as a master task under system control for automated IPL to occur. The region must also be positioned at the top of the IPL tree. (This is done for you automatically by the Express Setup Facility.)

To automate a z/OS IPL

  1. Specify the suffix of a LOADxx member in the LOAD parameter on the system control (SYSCTL) frame, and append M after the suffix: 
    nnnnxxM

    The system prompts will be suppressed.

  2. Specify OPERATOR NOPROMPT in the CLOCKxx member to be used.
  3. Specify NOPROMPT in the SMFPRMxx member to be used.

    The SMF prompts will be suppressed.

  4. Include the SYSPARM statement that identifies the IEASYSxx member to be used in the specified LOADxx member.
  5. Modify the IEASYSxx member identified in Step 4 as follows:
    1. Change or specify the OPI parameter value to prevent operator intervention after the initial IPL request: 
      OPI=NO           prevent operator intervention
    2. Ensure that the SSN parameter value includes the suffix of the IEFSSNxx member that contains the Automation Services subsystem ID.
    3. Ensure that the CLOCK parameter value specifies the suffix of the CLOCKxx member used in Step 2.
    4. Ensure that the SMF parameter value specifies the suffix of the SMFPRMxx member used in Step 3.
    5. Change or specify the CMD parameter value to ensure that only the commands in COMMNDSM are issued when the IPL is complete: 
      CMD=SM           issue commands in COMMNDSM
  6. Alter the primary JES subsystem definition, which is usually located in IEFSSN00, to one of the following settings: 
    JES2,PRIMARY,NOSTART

    JES3,PRIMARY,NOSTART

    This stops the system from issuing the automatic START command to start JES, and lets CA SOLVE:Operations Automation control the starting of JES.

  7. Copy the started task JCL member of the product that is to automate the IPL in SYS1.PROCLIB.

    The product will run as a master task.

  8. Add COM=‘S solve_operations_task,SUB=MSTR’ as the COMMNDSM member to SYS1.PARMLIB. solve_operations_task is the name of the member in the previous step.

    When IPL processing is complete, COMMNDSM is processed to start the product region. Your region initializes and starts the rest of the required system resources and started tasks according to the defined relationships or hierarchy.

Note: If you want to perform a manual IPL, do not specify M as the initialization message suppression indicator in the LOAD parameter on the SYSCTL IPL frame. Instead, specify an indicator that enables prompting for system parameters. When you IPL the system, you will then be prompted for system parameters, and you can specify an alternate IEASYSxx member to override the automation member.