Community name defined in the security product for each CPC

BCPii uses an SNMP community name to provide a minimal level of security between the z/OS image executing the BCPii service and the support element itself.

An SNMP community name is associated with a particular CPC. The same SNMP community name that was defined in the support element configuration for a particular CPC also must be defined in the security product for each CPC to which communication is required. This community name definition is extracted from the security product by BCPii and propagated to the support element. The support element validates that the community name passed by BCPii is correct before proceeding with the request. See Define the BCPii community name on the Support Element for information about how to define the community name on the SE or how to obtain the already-defined name.

To define the BCPii community name in the security product, use the APPLDATA field with the CPC profile definition to associate a community name with a particular CPC. The RACF syntax is as follows:

RALTER FACILITY HWI.TARGET.netid.nau APPLDATA('uppercasecommunityname’)
SETROPTS RACLIST(FACILITY) REFRESH

where netid.nau represents the 3 to 17 character SNA name of the CPC.

The APPLDATA field for the BCPii community name contains a 1– to 16–character alphanumeric field. Only uppercase letters and numbers are allowed. Because of restrictions with the security products on z/OS, the BCPii SNMP community name must not contain any lowercase characters.

This RACF example assigns a BCPii community name of XYZ123 to an existing CPC definition for CPC name NET1.CPC001:

RALTER FACILITY HWI.TARGET.NET1.CPC001 APPLDATA(‘XYZ123’)
SETROPTS RACLIST(FACILITY) REFRESH

Note: A community name definition must be defined for at least the local CPC. Otherwise, BCPii cannot continue with initialization of its address space and BCPii services are not available. This is accompanied by message HWI022I.