Objectives

This and the associated z/OS-MVS system fundamentals - part 2 form the core course of the MVS systems curriculum. By attending both components, students obtain a solid foundation, enabling further study in areas such as debugging, performance, installation, and customization of MVS. In the first part, students learn the 'ground rules' of MVS, in terms of architecture, storage management, and the major MVS control blocks and how to interpret them. The major MVS components are also introduced and a high level overview of job flow processing is briefly discussed. Part I finishes by showing how an MVS system is generated and IPL'd to produce a running system.

Main topics

• Description of the architectural principles governing the use of the CPU, Central Storage and the Channel SubSystem in the ESA/390 environment;
• Identification of the state of a CPU by examining PSW;
• Listing of the functions of the MVS components required to prepare MVS for work • execution of the work • exit of the work from the system;
• Use of IPCS and the debugging handbooks to locate and interpret major MVS control blocks in a dump;
• Description of the implementation of virtual storage in MVS;
• Map of the MVS address space;
• Dataspaces and Hiperspaces: creation and use;
• 'Sysgen' and IPL processes;
• Concept of authorised programs • subsystem interface • Master Scheduler.