SMF
System Management Facilities: the z/OS feature that writes a detailed record of what happened on the system, used for billing, performance and security.
Also written System Management Facilities, SMF record, SMF type 30, SMF type 80
SMF, System Management Facilities, is how z/OS keeps records of what happened. When a job ends, when a dataset is opened, when a user is refused access to something, z/OS and its subsystems write an SMF record describing it.
Each record has a type number that says what it describes. Some common ones: type 30 for jobs and job steps (start time, end time, processor time used), type 80 for RACF security events, types 70 to 79 for performance measurements, type 101 for DB2 and type 110 for CICS. The site chooses which types to collect.
The records are written to special datasets or log streams and then copied off regularly, because the volume is large. Other tools read them later to produce reports.
SMF data is used in many ways: charging departments for the processor time they used, planning how much capacity to buy, checking who accessed a sensitive dataset, and investigating a problem after it happened. If someone asks "can we prove what this job did last Tuesday?", the answer usually comes from SMF.
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Right here, at ZedBank. You take a junior job at a simulated bank and learn each part of the work by doing it, with Zed beside you. There's nothing to install.
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- z/OSThe main operating system that runs on IBM mainframes, in the same way Windows or Linux runs on a laptop or server.
- RACFThe security manager for z/OS, which decides who may sign on, read a dataset, or run a transaction.
- OperatorThe person who watches the running systems, responds to messages, and starts, stops and recovers work.
- System programmerThe person who installs, configures, tunes and upgrades the operating system and its subsystems.
- Production supportKeeping live systems running: diagnosing failures, fixing what broke, and getting the service back.