CCI Connectivity concerns

Products

• COMMON SERVICES FOR Z/OS

Issue/Introduction

You are running the CA Common Services CAICCI CCITCPGW task on three LPARS within a SYSPLEX. You do not believe they are all connected to each other although you are not sure why.

The three LPARS are named SYS1, SYS2, and SYS3

Looking at the CCITCPGW joblogs from each system...

• SYS1 shows connection messages to CCITCPGW on SYS2
• SYS1 shows no connection messages to CCITCPGW on SYS3

 

A review of the CCIPARMS does not reveal any obvious errors, and no errors of consequence in ENF/CCITCPGW joblogs.

Environment

• z/OS 2.x
• Common Services 14.1, 15.0

Resolution

For most connectivity concerns, if no obvious reason can be found as to why a connection is not working, a SVCDUMP can be taken for the CCITCPGW address space. The dump will contain all the information, including trace data, that we need to help identify the problem. The dump will also contain ENF information. The console command to obtain the dump is:

F CCITCPGW,SVCDUMP

Once the dump is obtained, open a new support case with CA Common Services and provide a copy of the dump to be reviewed.

 

In this specific case, it was determined that CCITCPGW on SYS1 was not connecting to SYS3 because an active CCI connection was already established via the XCF protocol.

A closer review of the CCIPARMS and the ENF joblogs from each system would have revealed this. The important take-away here is that each system can only have one physical connection to another system. So while you may define multiple CCI PROTOCOL statements in your CCI parameter file, a connection to a remote system can only be established using one of the defined protocols.

While the VTAM and TCPIPGW protocols require NODE/CONNECT statements to drive a connection to a remote system, the XCF protocol does not require NODE/CONNECT statements. An XCF connection will be established if the same XCF member name is specified on two systems within a sysplex.

When using the TCPIPGW protocol the CCITCPGW task will be responsible for the connectivity, and therefore you would review the CCITCPGW joblog for messages.

When using the XCF or VTAM protocols, the ENF task should be reviewed for any connectivity related messages.

 

Taking this specific connectivity concern into account, the ENF joblog from system SYS1 showed the following message indicating an XCF connection was established. Because this connection was established, connectivity via CCITCPGW was not attempted.

CAS9603I - CAICCI Member SYS3@CCIPLX      has Joined XCF

 

Following is an example of how the CCIPARMS are coded to connect two systems via XCF.

CCIPARMS for SYS1, in SYSPLEX PLEX1

SYSID(SYS1)

PROTOCOL(XCF,PLEX1)

 

CCIPARMS for SYS2, in SYSPLEX PLEX1

SYSID(SYS2)

PROTOCOL(XCF,PLEX1)

Refer to the CA Common Services 15.0 TechDoc Component Reference section for the CAICCI Control Options and the Administrating section for the Common Communications Interface (CAICCI) Setup Examples