Tom, I doubt you'll be able to use VM's virtual coupling facility if you don't have the underlying HW support for it. It actually grabs the CF stuff out of the HW and runs that in a virtual machine.
Marcy -----Original Message----- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU] On Behalf Of Tom Hebert Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 7:53 PM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: [IBMVM] Sharing files between two z/OS guest machines Stephan, zPDT is a z Series emulator running under Linux on 64 bit x86 machines. As such there is no hardware coupling facility. It's for development only, not production capable and distributed primarily to IBM business partners like us who develop third party software for mainframes. zPDT is essentially a VM environment and it does not offer a coupling facility either. zPDT is an excellent fit for our purposes, which is development only, but not very flexible or dynamic. So we run z/VM 5.4 on it and then several z/VSE and z/OS machines under VM. What we tried so far is dedicating a volume to a dummy guest, OBJDUMMY. Like this: MDISK A80 3390 DEVNO A80 MWV Then in each guest z/OS machine we put in something like this: LINK OBJDUMMY A80 A80 MW Is this safe? What happens if two developers open the same z/OS library dataset member on this A80 unit? Will the second one entering be denied in SPF? If not what happens if they both store their changes? We have been unable to find decent behavioral documentation in this regard. If the locking does not go down to the member level, we may set up VM's virtual coupling facility. It's not recommended for production but we aren't a production shop. I wonder if anyone out there has an opinion in this area. Thanks, Tom Hebert -----Original Message----- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU] On Behalf Of Stephen Powell Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 8:23 PM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Sharing files between two z/OS guest machines On Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:27:26 -0500 (EST), Tom Hebert wrote: > > Please forgive me if I am asking in the wrong place or if you have > answered this question before. > > We have a z1090 (otherwise known as a zPDT machine). It has no SYSPLEX > hardware. > > We have several z/OS guests at various release levels for QA purposes. > Copying files between guests is getting a little bothersome. > > What is the best, safe way to share MVS files between the guest z/OS machines? This is really more of a z/OS question than a z/VM question, but some z/VM facilities do (or can) come into play. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a whole lot about the SYSPLEX environment, but I'm not sure what you mean when you say "It [the z1090] has no SYSPLEX hardware". Do you mean, for example, that it has no coupling facility? I know that z/VM can create a virtual SYSPLEX environment between virtual machines. I've never tried to do it, but I've heard that it can be done. And I'm not sure but I don't think any special hardware is needed. But I could be wrong. Check out the manuals. Assuming for the moment that a virtual sysplex is not an option, traditional methods of file sharing between MVS systems, such as GRS, RESERVE/RELEASE, etc., can be used in virtual machines. You can define full-pack minidisks and have the guests link to them, rather than dedicating DASD packs to a single guest. By using "V" in the link access mode in the directory entry you enable virtual reserve/release. Make sure that the DASD is defined in MVS as shared dasd. hth -- .''`. Stephen Powell : :' : `. `'` `-
