About this Course

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 Profile

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.

At Course Completion

Upon completing this course, students will be able to:

• 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

• 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

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

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