Enabling the automatic restart management (ARM) feature on a server instance

You can use this procedure to activate automatic restart management (ARM), enable the z/OS® automatic restart manager feature, and activate automatic restart management (ARM) on the Liberty server.

Before you begin

Note: Before you begin to enable ARM, you must have installed the zosAutomaticRestartManager-1.0 feature by using the installUtility command.

You must have access to the couple data set format utility, IXCL1DSU, in SYS1.MIGLIB and have UPDATE access to the IXCARM.elementType.elementName entity. If you plan to modify the ARM policy, you must have access to the administrative data utility, IXCMIAPU, also in SYS1.MIGLIB, and have UPDATE authorization to the RACF® FACILITY class MVSADMIN.XCF.ARM. To start a policy, you must have READ authorization to the RACF FACILITY class MVSADMIN.XCF.ARM.

With Liberty, you must activate the ARM component itself, which means you must:

Allocate an ARM couple data set.
Start the automatic restart management policy.

If automatic restart management is not active, Liberty issues an error message to the messages log.

About this task

You are not required to change the ARM policy. However, you must modify this policy if you want to create custom restart groups.

This procedure gives you information to enable the z/OS automatic restart manager feature and get it running. Defining ARM policies requires you to use z/OS operator commands.

Procedure

If the ARM is not started, issue the following operator commands to start the ARM policy.
```
SETXCF COUPLE,TYPE=ARM,PCOUPLE=(dsname,vvvvvv) SETXCF START,POLICY,TYPE=ARM
```
where

dsname

The data set name for the couple data set

vvvvvv

The volume serial of the volume on which the couple data set resides
Enable the z/OS automatic restart manager feature (zosAutoRestartManager) in the server.xml file.
```
<featureManager>
        <feature>zosAutomaticRestartManager-1.0</feature>
</featureManager>
```
Configure the ARM element name by specifying the zosArmElementName in the server.xml file.
```
<automaticRestartManager zosArmElementName="NAME"/>
```
Optional: You can check the status by displaying all registered address spaces (including the address spaces of server instances). Issue the command.
```
d xcf,armstatus,detail
```

Results

After you performed the steps to enable the z/OS automatic restart manager feature, the server is successfully registered with ARM services. The z/OS automatic restart manager automatically restarts servers on a failure.

Note: The z/OS automatic restart manager feature can only be enabled during a server startup and can be disabled while the server is running. If the feature is enabled dynamically after server startup, message CWWKB0750W is written to the messages.log file.