Preparing for future installations

When you build a z/OS® system, you must balance the needs of your installation to build a system that meets its needs well. While this will sometimes mean compromise, it more often means finding ways to build a flexible system that is easy to install, easy to migrate, easy to extend, and easy to change. z/OS provides tremendous flexibility in installation and customization. When applied using a well-planned structure, this flexibility can minimize the time it takes to install and migrate new systems or new software levels throughout an installation.

Adopting a well-planned structure for your installation provides the foundation for controlling workload during future installations and migrations. Depending on how your system is structured today, doing this can be very easy, requiring little investment, or quite difficult, requiring many system programming hours. However, the long-term benefits of a well-planned structure are quite clear.

This topic helps you prepare for future installations. Many of the techniques discussed in this topic, if you are not using them today, could take considerable time to implement. It can be difficult or even impossible to attempt to do all these things during a single build and migration cycle, for any number of reasons.

A phased approach will often prove most feasible and can begin to control the installation and migration workload in the least time. This provides you benefits, starting with the next installation and migration cycle, while controlling the work involved in implementation. As you implement each technique, more time to implement the remainder should be available during future system builds and migrations.