In 1990, IBM announced the sysplex as the strategic direction for large systems computing environments, described as "a collection of z/OS systems that cooperate, using certain hardware and software products, to process work." The term sysplex is derived from the words SYStems comPLEX. At the time of this first announcement, and for several years thereafter, there was no Parallel Sysplexonly a base sysplex. The base sysplex provided improvements in interprocessor communications between systems and any subsystems that wanted to exploit those services, but no data-sharing services. The Parallel Sysplex was introduced later in the 1990s and added hardware and software components to provide for sysplex data sharing. In this context, data sharing means the ability for sysplex member systems and subsystems to store data into, and retrieve data from, a common area. In short, a Parallel Sysplex can have multiple central processor complexes (CPCs) and multiple applications (like IMS) that can directly share the workload. Although the Parallel Sysplex environment is complex, it basically consists of three elements:
Since IMS Version 5, each release of IMS has added more features that are based on Parallel Sysplex technology. Most of these features are discussed in the following sections of this chapter:
In this book, the term sysplex is synonymous with Parallel Sysplex. Related Reading:
In This Chapter:
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