Product Overview
System Assistant serves as a supervisor program for enterprise server systems. The operating system loads and executes a supervisor program immediately following system initialization. Supervisor programs are well suited to perform system verification, initialization, and configuration tasks. When invoked as part of system startup, System Assistant can verify the accuracy of the system configuration and perform systematic initialization of various subsystems as required.
General Features
You can program the System Assistant to automatically respond to predefined system events. The MCP passes information to the System Assistant regarding tasking events such as beginning-of-task or end-of-task. System Assistant also has the ability to perform actions based upon the occurrence of specified message events through the ON MESSAGE command. Wild-card specifications are supported to select task or message events of interest.
System Assistant also supports a macro interface. You can group system commands into macros to reduce the number of individual commands required to accomplish a given task.
System Assistant provides the following capabilities:
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Supports operator commands to control the ASSISTANT supervisory program.
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Schedules recurring or one-time-only tasks.
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Initiates a task when a specific system event occurs.
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Issues system commands and examines the responses.
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Verifies hardware and software configurations.
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Sends messages to other programs.
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Runs other programs or starts Work Flow Language (WFL) job.
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Uses special read-only variables to monitor and control BNA Version 2 hosts in a network, to monitor databases, and to manage program information.
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Changes Transaction Server configuration entities through programmed instructions.
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Monitors and responds to a failed mirror, a change in the spare disk pool, the result of a mirror create process, or a change in the peripheral configuration. System Assistant also enables the licensed users of San Spare Disk Manager to use that product without having to obtain a license for System Assistant.
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Reduces the amount of operator intervention required in configuring and initializing the enterprise server environment. You can customize the System Assistant parameters to accommodate the changing requirements of your environment.
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Minimizes operator error and system downtime by automating the execution of repetitive and complex tasks. It also frees operations personnel to focus attention on more challenging activities within the IT department.
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Enables you to use the CONSTELLATION declaration to access all declared hosts in a multihost environment without having to access each host by its host identifier. As a result, more logic does not have to be added to the script when a host is added or deleted.
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Enables you to recover a lost SOURCE parameter (script) file from the OBJECT parameter file.
System Assistant comprises two components:
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The ASSIST compiler reads a source parameter file, which resembles ALGOL source code, and creates an encoded parameter file.
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The ASSISTANT is a supervisor program whose actions are controlled by the encoded parameter file. The MCP initiates the ASSISTANT following system initialization. The ASSISTANT loads the encoded parameter file and performs any actions specified in the parameter file. When ASSISTANT completes its initialization, it can optionally remain an active program, based on input parameters. Then, an operator can communicate with the ASSISTANT and instruct it to perform specific tasks.
Ordering Information
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Platform |
Style |
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ClearPath |
The ordering style for System Assistant is CSP 10nn-OCA, where nn represents performance groups 10 through 160 (in increments of 10). |
Source code is available for this product. You can license it separately.
Product Information
Refer to the System Assistant Operations and Programming Guide (8600 0825) for more information.
