Running the plan

About this task

The production plan contains information about which jobs to run, on which fault-tolerant agent, and what dependencies must be satisfied before each job is launched. HCL Workload Automation creates the production plan starting from the modeling data stored in the database and from an intermediate plan called the preproduction plan. The preproduction plan is automatically created and managed by the product. To avoid problems, the database is locked during the generation of the plan and is unlocked when the generation completes or if an error condition occurs. The preproduction plan is used to identify in advance the job stream instances and the external follows job stream dependencies involved in a specified time period.

You use the JnextPlan command on the master domain manager to generate the production plan and distribute it across the HCL Workload Automation network.

To generate and start a new production plan, HCL Workload Automation performs the following steps:
  1. Updates the preproduction plan with the objects defined in the database that were added or updated since the last time the plan was created or extended.
  2. Retrieves from the preproduction plan the information about the job streams to run in the specified time period and saves it in an intermediate production plan.
  3. Includes in the new production plan the uncompleted job streams from the previous production plan.
  4. Creates the new production plan and stores it in a file named Symphony™. The production plan data is also replicated in the database.
  5. Distributes a copy of the Symphony™ file to the workstations involved in the new product plan processing.
  6. Logs all the statistics of the previous production plan into an archive.
  7. Updates the job stream state in the preproduction plan.

The copy of the newly-generated Symphony™ file is used starting from the top domain's fault-tolerant agents and domain managers of the child domains and down the tree to all subordinate domains.

Each fault-tolerant agent that receives the production plan can continue processing even if the network connection to its domain manager goes down.

At each destination fault-tolerant agent, HCL Workload Automation performs the following actions to manage job processing:
  1. Accesses the copy of the Symphony™ file and reads the instructions about which job to run.
  2. Makes calls to the operating system to launch jobs as required.
  3. Updates its copy of the Symphony™ file with the job processing results and sends notification back up the tree to the master domain manager and to all full status fault-tolerant agents. The original copy of the Symphony™ file is stored on the master domain manager and the copies stored on the backup master domain managers, if defined, are updated accordingly.

This means that during job processing, each fault-tolerant agent has its own copy of the Symphony™ file updated with the information about the jobs it is running (or that are running in its domain and child domains if the fault-tolerant agent is full-status or a domain manager), and the master domain manager (and backup master domain manager if defined) has the copy of the Symphony™ file that contains all updates coming from all fault-tolerant agents. In this way the Symphony™ file on the master domain manager is kept up-to-date with the jobs still to run, the jobs running, and the jobs already completed.

After the production plan is generated for the first time, it can be extended to the next production period with the JnextPlan command. The Symphony™ file is refreshed with the latest changes and redistributed throughout the network.