Creating special resources

Operations hold and release special resources automatically, according to their descriptions in the current plan, and the resources are available and connected to workstations, also as scheduled in the current plan. You specify how operations use special resources when you create the operation (see Creating an application and its operations). But first you must create the resource, its attributes, what workstations it is connected to, and the number available in each interval. That is described in this chapter.

Resources represent something, such as tape drives, and the current plan is built assuming that so many tape drives will be available. If one breaks down, HCL Workload Automation for Z continues to allocate the broken tape drive to a job that needs one. The job will wait, because z/OS® knows that the tape drive is offline. Because availability can be affected in this way, there are ways for programs to automatically change resource status, and for operators to manually change resource status:

A program that detects a change in status can call the EQQUSIN subroutine to set an availability or a deviation (an alteration to the planned quantity). For example, if a program detects that online response times are poor, it can set a deviation of -40 for the resource representing lines for file transfer use.
An operator can use the SPECIAL RESOURCE MONITOR panel to set a resource unavailable. Refer to Using the special resource monitor for details.
A program or an operator can issue the SRSTAT command, either directly from TSO or as input to the EQQEVPGM program.
If you have RODM, and HCL Workload Automation for Z subscribes to it, HCL Workload Automation for Z can keep in step with the system automatically for the resources defined to RODM.

All these methods can change the availability, the deviation, and the quantity of a resource from that specified in the planned availability intervals.

How resource quantity and availability can be changed shows how the planned availability of some resource such as tape drives is affected by unplanned events such as input from the Special Resource Monitor, the SRSTAT command, the EQQUSIN subroutine, and RODM. Manually altered overriding quantity, availability, and deviation values are honored across an interval boundary and batch daily planning EXTEND and REPLAN jobs. To make HCL Workload Automation for Z revert to a scheduled value after a manual alteration, you must reset the value, as at 11.20.

Table 1. How resource quantity and availability can be changed
	Planned values		Actual values
Start of interval / time of event	Planned quantity	Planned availability	Actual quantity	Actual availability	Deviation	Number available
08.00	8	N	Interval specifies quantity 8, not available
			8	N	0	0
08.40	You set the availability to Y with the EQQUSIN subroutine
			8	Y	0	8
09.00	8	N	A new interval specifies the resource unavailable
			8	Y	0	8
09.40	You set a deviation of -1 with the SRSTAT command
			8	Y	-1	7
09.41	You set a deviation of -1 with the SRSTAT command
			8	Y	-2	6
09.42	You set the deviation to -1 with the Special Resource Monitor
			8	Y	-1	7
10.00	9	Y	Extend CP, and interval specifies 9 available
			9	Y	-1	8
10.20	You set the quantity to 6 with the SRSTAT command
			6	Y	-1	5
11.00	8	Y	Interval specifies 8 available
			6	Y	-1	5
11.20	You reset the quantity with the SRSTAT command
			8	Y	-1	7

The number available (the last column) is the actual number available for allocation, taking into account the actual quantity, the deviation, and the actual availability.

The three events starting at 09.40 show the difference between altering the deviation with SRSTAT (or a subroutine) and with the Special Resource Monitor. SRSTAT adds the specified deviation to the current deviation, but the panel replaces the current deviation with the value you specify.

If you change values other than the overriding (global) quantity, availability, and deviation, or the values for an interval, you lose the changes at the next daily planning run, but the job issues a warning message about any manually changed values that will be lost. For example, if you change the default quantity (the quantity used where intervals are not specified) in the current plan, this is replaced at the next daily planning run with the value from the database.