IBM SC34-7012-01 manual Workload policies, Connecting to Vtam, Cics Start options

CICS START options

You are recommended to specify START=AUTO, which causes a warm start after a normal shutdown and an emergency restart after failure.

You are also recommended always to use the same JCL, even if it specifies START=COLD or START=INITIAL, to ensure that CICS restarts correctly when restarted by the MVS automatic restart manager after a failure.

If you specify START=COLD (or INITIAL) and your ARM policy specifies that the automatic restart manager is to use the same JCL for a restart following a CICS failure, CICS overrides the start parameter when restarted by ARM and enforces START=AUTO. CICS issues message DFHPA1934 and ensures the resultant emergency restart handles recoverable data correctly.

If the ARM policy specifies different JCL for an automatic restart and that JCL specifies START=COLD, CICS uses this parameter value but risks losing data integrity. Therefore, if you need to specify different JCL to ARM, specify START=AUTO to ensure data integrity.

Workload policies

Workloads are started initially by scheduling or automation products.

The components of the workload, and the MVS images capable of running them, are specified as part of the policies for MVS workload manager and ARM. The MVS images must have access to the databases, logs, and program libraries required for the workload.

Administrative policies provide ARM with the necessary information to perform appropriate restart processing. You can define one or more administrative policies, but can have only one active policy for all MVS images in a sysplex. You can modify administrative policies by using an MVS-supplied utility, and can activate a policy with the MVS SETXCF command.

Connecting to VTAM

VTAM is at restart level 1, the same as DB2 and DBCTL.

However, VTAM is not restarted when failed subsystems are being restarted on another MVS, because ARM expects VTAM to be running on all MVS images in the sysplex. For this reason, CICS and VTAM are not generally part of the same restart group.

In a VTAM network, the session between CICS and VTAM is started automatically if VTAM is started before CICS. If VTAM is not active when you start (or restart) CICS, you receive the following messages:

+DFHSI1589D ’applid’ VTAM is not currently active.

+DFHSI1572 ’applid’ Unable to OPEN VTAM ACB - RC=xxxxxxxx, ACB CODE=yy.

CICS provides a new transaction, COVR, to open the VTAM ACB automatically when VTAM becomes available. See “The COVR transaction” on page 71 for more information about this.

70CICS TS for z/OS 4.1: Recovery and Restart Guide