Open z/OS Enablement, OzE

Vision:

The purpose of the open z/OS enablement project is to capture several work efforts to allow experienced sets of users to try innovative ideas and other users to learn mainframe skills to increase the vitality of the mainframe as its' software.

Problem Statement:

Lack of access to z environments is a major impediment to the growth and innovation on the platform. Type of uses targeted include:

• Open Source Communities and new software development efforts\
• Mentoring and new user growth, consistent with and attractive to those who use other public cloud learning opportunities\
• Experimentation and innovation on the edge of environment stability like the Raspberry Pi Model
     Impediments to these types of environments include:
     - Critical knowledge and support in sysprogs for z systems
     - Cost and control of donated resources (MIPs, software, storage, etc.)
     - Security and access control

This project intends to create code, processes and techniques which reduce these impediments and enable broader use and development of the z platform

Core Requirements:

The following gives a sense of Common Workstream elements no matter what configuration is being provided:

1. Software inventory of the z/OS instance or "Bill Of Materials" (BOM)

2. Ability to request a known BOM instance and create a running instance after applying required changes / additions (like users, passwords, security tweaks, etc.) 

3. Making the instance available to consumer such that the instance can be quiesced, started, stopped or deleted.  (Quiesce presumes the user could start it up again)

This is a common model used in things like Docker, Vagrant and other vm image libraries and uses.

Dimensional Requirements:

Ways in which access to z/OS systems might be accessed has many dimensions to it, some of which are shown below. The reasons for identifying the dimensions was to identify the area of most need and priority of attack to impact the most open source needs.

Sample Dimensions

   Tenancy:  Multi-tenant vs. Single-tenant
   Operation:  Emulated vs. Bare Metal
   Hardware:  Donated Hardware vs. Owned Hardware
   OS:  Operating system Choices (zVM, zLinux, z/OS, etc.)
   Emulator: (zD&T, zPDT, zVM, Docker, Vagrant, other)
   User Organization Type: (community, single company, multi company, other)
   Sysprog support model: (shared vs. independent)\

The many different dimensions to this problem would mean the project would become difficult to manage in all the various aspects. After several meetings, the following dimensions will be considered fixed for most important cases:

• Mutli-tenant (single tenancy can be easier to handle)

• Community (single or multiple companies are easier)

• Both Analytical and Transaction workloads (Not critical for the tooling being considered)

• Multi month use (as opposed to very short usages)

This then reduced the project dimensions to this table. This matrix could provide different ways of attacking the problem space.

Complexity	Environment Use	Emulated zPDT/zD&T	Emulated zPDT/zD&T	Z Hardware (either Bare Metal or z/VM)	Z Hardware (either Bare Metal or z/VM)
		Donated or Shared	Owned	Donated or Shared	Owned
Simple	Shared sysprog support required to establish the user’s z/OS environment (For example simply Unix System Services)	Perhaps z/OS on AWS with IBM ZD&T Code as a template	1 Perhaps z/OS on AWS with IBM ZD&T Code as a template (target audience MF Novices)	1 Marist College or VCU environment template, with donated REXX from a company	Company enables employee experimentation using company resources
Medium	Sysprog activities required inside the user’s z/OS environment (This is typically TSO Access which require more Sysprog support)	Perhaps z/OS on AWS with IBM ZD&T Code as a template	2 Perhaps z/OS on AWS with IBM ZD&T Code as a template (target Audience is Medium to High MF Experience)	2 Marist College or VCU environment template, with donated REXX from a company	Company enables employee experimentation using company resources
Medium Plus	Other Licensed and Enterprise Tooling Additions (CICS, DB2, ACF2, Endeavor, Compilers) etc.
Complex	Physical Resource Control (i.e., Sysplex Enablement)

There are multiple areas that have a need for a work stream. The chart above is attempting to determine what areas are of high priority and will have the most impact for the open source community. A major consideration is to ensure that the releases are functional, easy to use and do as intended before release.

Not Intended to Cover:

The following topics are not intended to be covered in this working group:

• Access to z MIPs or to licensed software. The owners of those resources control them and contribute them directly to communities

• Management of donated resources. This project is intended to enable donation, making donation easier, and ensuring ownership control of resources is controlled by owners, but does not provide management of environments.

Next Steps

• Contact potential code donation for internal environment allocation routines as a starting point for building out Bare Metal or z/VM offering

• Contact owners of z/OS on AWS with IBM ZD&T to consider contribution so other platforms may be supported or supplied for emulated offering

• Broaden Sysprog involvement in project, through perhaps joint sponsorship with SHARE to gain Sysprog expertise for project

News and Discussion

You can connect with the community in a variety of ways...

• Open z/OS enablement

• Join the conversation on Open Mainframe Project Slack

• After requesting access with the above link, look for the #wg-open-zos-enablement channel

Contributing

Anyone can contribute to the z/OS open environment project - learn more at [CONTRIBUTING.md]{.ul}

Governance

Open zOS enablement is a project hosted by the [Open Mainframe Project]{.ul}. This project has established its' own processes for managing day-to-day processes in the project at [GOVERNANCE.md]{.ul}.

Reporting Issues

To report a problem, you can open an [issue]{.ul} in repository against a specific workflow. If the issue is sensitive in nature or a security related issue, please do not report in the issue tracker but instead email [email protected].

Meetings

Once you have subsribed to the group you can follow the link below for events. See the Open Mainframe Project public calendar. This WG meets biweekly every other Thursday at 4:00 PM EST.

Meeting notes

Meeting notes, recordings, and any presentations made during WG meetings are available here.