Access z/OS Performance and Management Data using CA SYSVIEW and Zowe CLI

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Zowe

5 min readNov 24, 2020

{Ecosystem} The Open Mainframe Project’s Zowe is helping mainframers everywhere access their z/OS data and services in new and innovative ways. From the Command Line Interface (CLI) and batch scripts, to VS Code and custom Node.js applications, Zowe is the future of mainframe. In addition to core functionality such as viewing jobs and data sets, it has an extensible plug-in framework to add support for any application running a REST API. CA SYSVIEW is the latest such plug-in.

CA SYSVIEW is a z/OS performance monitoring and management application, providing 24x7 monitoring of your mainframe environment and critical business transactions. Not only can you view information regarding z/OS and all your subsystems, including JES, CICS, MQ, DB2, IMS, and more, you can also set up alerts to know in real time when an issue occurs. Now, with Zowe and the SYSVIEW for Zowe plug-in, you can view all your data without ever using the 3270 (unless you want to)!

Prerequisites

Latest version of Zowe
A SYSVIEW REST server to which Zowe will connect (requires PTF SO14533 applied on z/OS)

Getting started

Zowe is also available with enterprise support. CA Brightside delivers Zowe and a variety of open source and commercial extensions with full support from Broadcom.

Brightside subscribers will have the CA SYSVIEW for Zowe plug-in included in the bundle. For open source Zowe users, the plug-in can be installed using the following command:

zowe plugins install @broadcom/sysview-for-zowe-cli

Afterwards, you will likely want to create a SYSVIEW profile to save your connection information. In addition, there is a second profile for formatting the output which gets displayed.

Use Cases

The following topics contain examples of CA SYSVIEW plug-in commands that you can execute and profiles that you can create using Zowe CLI and the CA SYSVIEW plug-in. To learn more about commands, help is available by issuing the SYSVIEW command “HELP <commandname>”.

Support ticket:

As an IT Operations Manager, you want to include system activity data during the automated creation of select help desk tickets. Your service management system can execute scripts, so you want to execute SYSVIEW display commands using Zowe CLI and the SYSVIEW plug-in to include CPU usage and the top 10 CPU consuming address spaces.

To capture the CPU information, issue the following command:

zowe sysview display “set selectnext ‘addr eq ‘’all’’’;cpu” --fields type busy% busygraph

After the Zowe command execution completes, the following output generates for the trouble ticket:

Type Busy% ...1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9..10
ALL  31.9  *************
CP   65.8  **************************
SP   6.5   ***
IIP  6.5   ***

To capture the top 10 CPU consuming address spaces, issue the following command:

zowe sysview display “activity;sort cput% d linelimit 10” --fields jobname asid type cput% cpu-time

After the Zowe command execution completes, the following output generates for the trouble ticket:

Jobname  ASID Type CPUT%  CPU-Time
CICSJOB1 01A6 STC  36.904 20.85379
USER002  052A TSU  14.488 8.257708
CATALOG  002A SYS  13.301 7.619393
OMVS     0012 SYS  11.889 6.758058
TESTJOB  0511 STC  11.278 6.556914
REGRESS1 047D JOB  8.411  4.802743
JVMSERV  0167 STC  6.295  3.772017
*MASTER* 000B SYS  6.284  3.597984
CICSJOB2 058D STC  5.258  3.016502
JES2     003A STC  4.473  2.540347

CI/CD pipeline:

As an application developer, you want to ensure that your test application load library is APF authorized in your sandbox as part of the CI/CD pipeline. You want to execute CA SYSVIEW commands using the Zowe CLI and the CA SYSVIEW plug-in.

To APF authorize your test load library, issue the following command:

zowe sysview execute “apfserv add my.test.loadlib *”

Note that some commands may require special privileges. As with other interfaces, commands issued through the REST API are subject to internal security within SYSVIEW.

After the Zowe command execution completes, the following message is logged into your pipeline:

Message: APFL012I Entry added — MY.TEST.LOADLIB VOL001

How will you use the SYSVIEW plug-in? Let us know your use cases in the comments below!

Format Profiles

The following examples demonstrate how you can customize the way data displays when you use format profiles with CA SYSVIEW commands. Issue the following Zowe command:

zowe sysview display “CICSLIST INTERVAL” --fields name status trans lifetime

After the Zowe command execution completes, the following information displays:

Name     Status Trans Lifetime
CICS0001 ACTIVE 154   1.206513
CICS0002 ACTIVE 151   5.518209
CICS0003 ACTIVE 151   1.793745
CICS0004 ACTIVE 150   1.293687
CICS0005 ACTIVE 171   8.740909
CICS0006 ACTIVE 0     0.000000
CICS0007 ACTIVE 0     0.000000
CICS0008 ACTIVE 0     0.000000
CICS0009 ACTIVE 0     0.000000

Create a format profile:

As an IT Operations Manager, you want to create a profile named myFormat that displays the context fields named lparName and systemName, the information area and the overview area, and display blanks instead of zeros.

To create the profile, issue the following command:

zowe profiles create sysview-format-profile myFormat --cf lparname systemName --overview true --info true --pretty true --biz true

After the command execution completes, the following message displays:

Profile created successfully! Path:
C:\Users\<username>\.zowe\profiles\sysview-format\myFormat.yaml
contextFields:
 - lparName
 - systemName
overview:      true
info:          true
pretty:        true
blankIfZero:   true
Review the created profile and edit if necessary using the profile update command.

If myFormat was the first profile that you created, it is your default profile. With this scenario (myFormat is your default profile), you do not need to specify the profile using the --sysview-format-p argument. You can create more than one format profile and specify any profile that you create as your default profile.

Using the format profile:

Re-issue the command and include the profile named myFormat:

zowe sysview display “CICSLIST INTERVAL” --fields name status trans lifetime --sysview-format-p myFormat

After the Zowe command execution completes, the following information displays. Observe that the displayed results contain the fields, elements, and options that were defined in the myFormat profile:

Next Steps

We value user feedback and are always looking to improve our software. Try out the new CA SYSVIEW for Zowe CLI plug-in today and let us know what you think! Please send any questions or comments to support@broadcom.com