z/OS operating system: Providing virtual environments since the 1960s

• Hardware resources used by z/OS
• Multiprogramming and multiprocessing
• z/OS programming constructs: Modules, macros, components and control blocks
• Physical storage used by z/OS
• What is virtual storage?
• What is an address space?
• What is dynamic address translation?
• How z/OS uses physical and virtual storage
• How virtual storage addressing works in z/OS
• What is paging?
• How paging works in z/OS
• Swapping and the working set
• What is storage protection?
• The role of storage managers
• A brief history of virtual storage and 64-bit addressability
• What is meant by below-the-line storage?
• What's in an address space?
• System address spaces and the master scheduler
• What is workload management?
• I/O and data management
• Supervising the execution of work in the system
• What is interrupt processing?
• Dispatchable units of work: Tasks and service requests
• Preemptable versus non-preemptable units of work
• What does the dispatcher do?
• Serializing the use of resources
• Defining characteristics of z/OS
• Additional software products for z/OS
• Middleware for z/OS
• A brief comparison of z/OS and UNIX

z/OS storage constructs: File systems, data sets, and more

• What is a data set?
• Quick reference: Data set structure
• Where are data sets stored?
• What are access methods?
• What are DASD volumes and labels?
• Allocating a data set
• How are data sets named?
• How is space allocated on DASD volumes?
• Data set record formats
• Types of data sets
• Why is a PDS structured like that?
• What is a PDSE?
• What happens when a data set runs out of space?
• What is VSAM?
• What is a VTOC?
• What is a catalog?
• What is a generation data group?
• Role of DFSMS in managing space
• z/OS UNIX file systems
• z/OS data sets versus file system files
• What is a zFS file system?

Interacting with z/OS: TSO, ISPF, and z/OS UNIX interfaces

• What is TSO?
• What is TSO native mode?
• How are CLISTs and REXX used?
• What is ISPF?
• ISPF keyboard keys and functions
• The ISPF Data Set List utility
• The ISPF editor
• The ISPF Settings menu
• What is z/OS UNIX?
• ISHELL command (ish)
• OMVS command shell session
• Direct login to the z/OS UNIX shell

Processing work on z/OS: How the system starts and manages batch jobs

• What is batch processing?
• What is JES?
• What does an initiator do?
• Batch processing and JES: Scenario 1
• Batch processing and JES: Scenario 2
• Job flow through the system
• JES2 compared to JES3

Doing work on z/OS: How you submit, control and monitor jobs using JCL and SDSF

• What is JCL?
• How is a job submitted for batch processing?
• What is the System Display and Search Facility (SDSF)?

Parallel Sysplex: Worth the effort for continuous availability

• Benefits of Parallel Sysplex: No single points of failure
• Benefits of Parallel Sysplex: Capacity and scaling
• Benefits of Parallel Sysplex: Dynamic workload balancing
• Benefits of Parallel Sysplex: Ease of use
• Benefits of Parallel Sysplex: Single system image
• Benefits of Parallel Sysplex: Compatible change and non-disruptive growth
• Benefits of Parallel Sysplex: Application compatibility
• Benefits of Parallel Sysplex: Disaster recovery