Overview

This course teaches you navigation, operation, and recovery techniques for the Hardware Management Console (HMC) in the System z environment. Through lecture and hands-on exercises, you learn setup and operating procedures for the HMC, gain in-depth problem determination skills, practice HMC operations, and utilize recovery capabilities provided by the System z servers.

Audience

This intermediate course is for operations personnel and technical staff who are directly involved in the installation, operation, systems support, and software support of their System z mainframe environment.

Prerequisites

You should have an understanding of:

• Basic data processing and I/O concepts and terminology
• z/OS console operation, including display of device, job, and console status

Objective

Identify the zEnterprise 196 and 114, System z10, System z9, and zSeries servers

Describe the major differences of the function and features between the System z servers

Describe and explain the concept of logical partitioning

Identify how various resources are assigned to LPARs during initialization

Describe the functions provided by the HMC and SE

• User interface styles, local and remote connectivity

Identify HMC home page to log on HMC application

Use the classic UI to:

• Log on and log off
• Open objects
• Navigate the HMC workplace using various selection techniques
• Exit a task on a window
• View the online books and use the Help functions
• Identify the different types of groups
  • CPC group, control hardware
  • Images group, control operating system
• Build new CPC and images groups
• Identify the contents of the Details window and determine object status
• Identify the various task lists

Use the tree UI to:

• Log on and log off
• Open objects
• Navigate the HMC workplace using various selection techniques
• Exit a task on a panel
• View the online books and use the Help functions
• Identify the different types of groups
  • CPC group, control hardware
  • Images group, control operating system
• Build new CPC and images groups
• Identify the contents of the Details window and determine object status
• Identify the various task lists

Describe how exceptions are reported and presented on the HMC using the tree or classic UI

Use the HMC to determine the type and cause of the exception

Describe the three types of hardware messages that can surface on the HMC

Use the HMC to determine the cause of the hardware message

Retrieve the hardware messages from the log

Use the HMC Operating System Messages task to display and send messages to the operating system

Describe the functions that require the use of the access administrator ID

Use the HMC to perform access administrator related tasks

Describe the purpose, functions, and use of the different types of activation profiles

• Reset profile
• Image profile
• Group profile
• Load profile

Use the HMC to build new profiles, modify, view, or delete existing ones

Use the HMC to determine or change profile assignments Provide operational recommendations for HMC user settings

Use the HMC to perform

• A manual load operation
• A system reset
• Problem determination for a load failure

Invoke the system activity display and describe its purpose

Establish an HMC/SE session using the Single Object Operations task

Identify the difference between the HMC and SE workplace

Navigate using classic or tree UI to Identify CP, channel, and CHPID status for the physical CPC and all LPs

Identify the entry point for I/O and Channel Problem Determination panels

Log off from a CPC session

Course Outline

Day 1

• Welcome
• Unit 1: IBM mainframe server hardware: Overview
• Unit 2: Using the HMC classic style user interface
• Unit 3: Using the HMC tree style user interface
• Unit 4: Using the HMC to monitor System z servers
• Supporting labs

Day 2

• Review
• Unit 5: Activation profiles and operational tasks
• Unit 6: Single object operation: CPC session Supporting labs