Is the startup of CA MASTER mandatory?
Article ID: 30133
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
While it is understood that CA MASTER is a requirement of CA Common Services, and the failure to start CA MASTER will result is the failure for CAIRIM to successfully initialize (see CAIRIM r14.1 fails to initialize and issues message - CAS9125E - INVALID DATA: * SEVERE ERROR PARMLIB DD. CHECK CAIRIM USAGE), are there any plans to modify the design or will the initialization of CA MASTER continue to be mandatory? Are there any alternative methods of running CAMASTER? Can it be run as a subsystem?
Environment
Component: CA90S
Resolution
The simple answer to each question is NO. The CAMASTER address space is required.
In the IT businsess, the one thing that we can all agree upon is that every product on the market has some set of required components in order to function correctly. CA Common Services is no different and as such it too has required components that enable our services to function correctly, not only to satisfy potential requirements for other CA products but also for our own services to function without error.
CAMASTER is one of those components that are required for Common Services to function. Take IBM as a comparison. Just as IBM requires *MASTER*, GRS, CONSOLE, ALLOCAS, etc. for their Operating System infrastructure, CA Common Services requires CAMASTER for our CA framework.
CAMASTER runs as a system address space. It cannot be started as a SUBSYS under IEFSSN. CAMASTER provides services to all CA products including the security products, CA-ACF2 and CA-TSS. Because the security products initialize at a point in the IPL timeline before IEFSNNxx is processed, it is not possible to establish the CAMASTER services as a z/OS subsystem. Furthermore, there are many CA products that have the ability to initialize as z/OS subsystems thereby the functions supplied by CAMASTER must be in place before being needed by this category of CA products or components.
One design consideration for creating a permanent CAMASTER address space is the exploitation of program call (PC) routines to eliminate the need for CA products to define user SVC numbers. There is a limited number of SVCs that can be supported by z/OS. Furthermore, use of an SVC number typically requires installation specifications to identify a given SVC number to and for a product, either in the product's configuration options or in the IEASCVCxx member of PARMLIB. Exploitation of PC routines eliminates the need for installation configuration work as well as eliminates the constraint of limited SVC numbers.
As PC routines are bound to an active non-swappable address space by architecture, the need for the permanent CAMASTER address space is a requirement. For this reason, once the CAMASTER system address space has performed all necessary initialization, it enters a wait. No other task mode code executes in the CAMASTER address space as the home ASID after the wait to avoid any scenario that might bring down the address space. At this point, CAMASTER is more or less an anchor address space.
For additional details about CA MASTER, please refer to the CA Common Services Reference Guide.
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