Once you activate AUTOMON in your system, it will self-identify CICS system problems, investigate the actual cause of the problem and take corrective actions dynamically so that your CICS system remains available without interruption.
When AUTOMON/CICS discovers an abnormal condition it performs extensive investigation for loop and SOS conditions, storage violations and corruption, and many other exceptional conditions. Once the CICS system problem is identified, it will diagnose the symptoms and take corrective action immediately to prevent system crashes, enhance system availability, and improve system performance. AUTOMON/CICS continuously captures significant activities and conditions of CICS, VTAM, VSAM and other operating systems and will then periodically evaluate overall system performance objectives to set severity stages accordingly (normal, warning and critical).
In normal processing, AUTOMON/CICS offers maximum efficiency by allowing all incoming and outgoing transaction requests to be processed up to the HIGH threshold values which are preset by the systems programmers. This is known as the Green Flag Stage.
If the system experiences a performance problem, AUTOMON/CICS notifies the system console operator of the cause. Simultaneously, it reduces the incoming transaction flow by decreasing threshold values until the performance problem is resolved. This is known as the Yellow Flag Stage.
In a critical performance environment - system loop, short on storage, maximum tasks, resources deadlock, permanent ECB wait, storage violation, etc. - AUTOMON/CICS immediately notifies the system console operator of the precise cause and will wait for the Action Cycle to expire. The Action Cycle is pre-set by your systems programmer. After expiration of the Action Cycle, AUTOMON/CICS takes corrective actions to relieve the problem. This is known as the Red Flag Stage.
AUTOMON/CICS' behavior corresponds to CICS TS. When CICS is experiencing a system abend condition, a repair subtask will activate automatically to take corrective actions to prevent a system crash. All key virtual storage areas will be checked and repaired. After the completion of the recovery stages, the control task will give control back to CICS (dispatcher domain) for the continuous process.
If you are responsible for production systems and the delivery of CICS service to users, AUTOMON/CICS is a package you cannot do without.
Self-identify CICS system problems, investigate the actual cause of the problem, and take corrective action dynamically
Reduce CICS system outages via early detection of critical system problems and dynamical auto-correction
Maximize efficiency by allowing all incoming and outgoing transaction requests to be processed up to the HIGH threshold values
Automatically notify system console operators of system performance problems and the associated cause
Automatic detection of temporary storage shortages
Self-analysis of VSAM and VTAM resource dead-lock conditions
Key benefits that enable your CICS systems to run while saving your organization time and money.
Reduce hardware & software costs by 50-60%
Mitigate global CICS system outages
Accelerate terminal user response time
Automate CICS administration
Dramatically reduce help desk volume
Take control your critical host transaction server
Key features that keep your CICS subsystems running without incident.
Ease of use and installation
No APF authorization required, no IPL is required to install the product, no user SVCs and no operating systems exits.
Processing frequency logging
Average transaction rate, file I/O rate, VTAM I/O rate and aux temporary storage request rate capturing.
Short-on-Storage prevention
Prevention of short on storage and reduction of program compression cycles.
System / user abend settings
Automatic recovery of system/user abends (U305, U409, U602, U615, and more).
SysPlex and MRO/ISC compatibility
Monitoring of multi-CICS system activities through CICS and TSO/ISPF.
Auto adjust MXT / AMXT
Adjusting the MXT, AMXT and Cushion Size values dynamically.
Loop detection
System loop detection and application loop correction.
System degradation watch
Detection of exception and degradation conditions.
Artificial Intelligence
Storage violation detection and correction.
On-line messages
On-line access to messages and abend codes.
Central control panel
On-line generation of AUTOMON system table.
History database
Detailed logging facility (history database).
Dynamic system relief
Relief for system stress conditions.
CICS resource change log
Automatic logging of CICS changes.
AUTOMON/CICS is comprised of 5 main components.
Control subtask
Detective mechanism
Repair subtask
User action interface handler
Logging facility