12.4 Procedures

A procedure outlines what is to be done, under which conditions, by whom, and when, to satisfy policies and SLAs. With the example of the SLA statement in the previous section, a procedure could look like this:

1. If an image goes down as seen by z/VM, z/VM initiates a restart, and, if successful, logs that a successful automatic restart has taken place for the image.

2. If the automatic restart is not successful, the operations staff is notified through the health monitor GUI, and an e-mail is sent to the client contact.

3. If the recovery is not completed after 30 minutes, a page and an e-mail are sent to the responsible system administrator.

An obvious next step to increase productivity is to automate those parts of a procedure that follow a fixed repetitive pattern. For example, you could write a script that issues a set series of commands. A more elaborate piece of code might handle more complex parts of a procedure. Step one of our example is already automated through z/VM.