Closing workstations

Work and free days, as specified in the HCL Workload Automation for Z calendar, are used by HCL Workload Automation for Z to decide whether applications should be scheduled to start on a particular day. HCL Workload Automation for Z must also consider the availability of workstations. It takes this information from the workstation description database. Before it schedules an operation, HCL Workload Automation for Z checks that the workstation on which the operation will run is available throughout the estimated run time of the operation. Whether HCL Workload Automation for Z starts the operation depends on the result of this check and the shutdown policy that you have specified in the SHUTDOWNPOLICY parameter of the JTOPTS initialization statement (for details about JTOPTS, see Customization and Tuning). Note that workstations must be defined with the option CONTROL ON SERVERS=Y to make SHUTDOWNPOLICY work and to prevent jobs from being submitted when the workstations are closed.

When you have a holiday, which is specified in the calendar as a free day, HCL Workload Automation for Z does not schedule operations on that day (unless the run cycle specifies free day rule = 3), but it schedules operations right up to the end of the previous day, regardless of their estimated duration. This might be what you want.

But when you have a z/OS® maintenance period, for example, you want to avoid having any jobs running at the start of the period. In this case, make the workstations unavailable for this period. HCL Workload Automation for Z does not start an operation on a workstation if there is less time than its estimated duration until the start of a closed interval.

If no work at all is to be done on a particular day; that is, no work must be started on that day or carried forward from the previous day:
  • Specify it as a free day.
  • Check that no applications with free day rule 3 are scheduled on that day.
  • Do not have any open intervals for the workstation on the holiday, so that HCL Workload Automation for Z does not start any work on the previous day that will run over into the closed day. You can specify dates when all workstations should be closed on the MODIFYING ALL WORKSTATIONS CLOSED panel (EQQWMACL - Modifying all workstations closed), which you reach by selecting option 4 from the MAINTAINING WORKSTATION DESCRIPTIONS panel.
Figure 1. EQQWMACL - Modifying all workstations closed
 EQQWMACL ------------ MODIFYING ALL WORK STATIONS CLOSED ---------  ROW 1 OF 3
 Command ===>                                                  Scroll ===> PAGE

 Change data in the rows, and/or enter any of the following row commands:
 I(nn) - Insert, R(nn),RR(nn) - Repeat,  D(nn),DD - Delete

 Row  Date:    Comments                       WS closed:   Last update
 cmd  YY/MM/DD                                HH.MM-HH.MM  user     date
 '' 97/09/16 Night shift operation only____ 08.00 24.00  ANDERSM  97/04/21
 '' 97/09/17 Night shift operation only____ 08.00 24.00  ANDERSM  97/04/21
 '' 97/10/14 Hardware upgrade shutdown_____ 00.00 24.00  ANDERSM  97/04/21
 ******************************* BOTTOM OF DATA ********************************
You can specify when workstations are open with the WORKSTATION DESCRIPTION panel, in any of these ways. The list is in order of highest to lowest precedence.
  1. For each workstation, you can create open time intervals for a specific date.
  2. For all workstations, you can create intervals for specific dates when they are all closed (for example, 95/12/25 00:00–23:59).
  3. For each workstation, you can create open time intervals for a particular weekday (for example, Friday).
  4. For each workstation, you can create open time intervals for a standard day. You then specify which days of the week are to be considered standard days (for example, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday).

HCL Workload Automation for Z never cancels a job: a job that is submitted is allowed to complete, even if it runs over to a day where no work is to be done.

When you have made a change with the WORKSTATION DESCRIPTION panel, you must run daily planning for the change to take effect. But a change to the closed status does not take effect, even after a daily planning EXTEND or REPLAN, if you have closed the workstation in the current plan (using the MCP panel, for example).