Unicenter Autosys Job Management

AUTOSYS JOB SCHEDULING

Venkat Duvvuri

http://datastage-venkat.blogspot.com/


THE UNICENTER AUTOSYS JOB MANAGEMENT CONSOLE PROVIDES:

A single point of control for viewing one or all scheduling servers, allowing you to monitor and control jobs.

A virtual console instead of a physical console, accessible from any Unicenter AutoSys Job Management machine. It means - you can bring up the console anywhere in your environment



AUTOSYS HAS AN INTERFACE THAT IS EASY TO MASTER



CA AutoSys WA provides distributed-hosted event driven automation that aligns workload execution with business policies to:Increase operational efficiency Improve productivity Increase availability of critical business

services Manage costs and lower risk costs and lower risk



HISTORY: AutoSys was first developed by William Arntz and Walter Goodwin who

created AutoSystems Corp to market it. The product was then sold to Platinum Technology International in 1995 (one of many systems management companies acquired by Platinum Technology that year). Platinum invested in new features and functionality including the Xpert and JobVision modules . In May 1999, Platinum was itself acquired by Computer Associates (CA) for 3.5 billion U.S. dollars, at that time the largest transaction in the history of the software industry. CA offered $29.25 per share, almost a three-to-one premium over Platinum's stock price of $9.875. In 2006 CA was the subject of intense media scrutiny as it became clear that a $2.2 billion accounting fraud had been orchestrated by chief executive Sanjay Kumar; however the popularity of the AutoSys product remained unaffected.

William Arntz later became Producer, Director, Screenwriter, President at Captured Light, makers of cult film "What The Bleep".Walter Goodwin became founder and CEO of Stirling Systems Group, LLC and later Terma Software Labs .



WHAT IS AUTOSYS AutoSys is used for defining, scheduling and

monitoring jobs. These jobs can be a UNIX script, java program or any other program which can be invoked from shell. Before starting we assume that user has already setup an AutoSys environment. This environment consists of autosys server and autosys client.



AND WHAT IS LATEST???The current version is r11.0

and it has been GA since November 2007. This version comes with eIAM (Embedded Identity and Access management) security management module to secure access to scheduling resources.



AUTOSYS COMPONENTS:1. Event server (AutoSys database)2. Event processor3. Remote agent

Event Server: The event server is a AutoSys database which stores all system information and events as well as all job, monitor, and report definitions. Sometimes this database is also called as a data server, which actually describes a server instance. That is, it is either a UNIX or Windows process, and it is associated data space (or raw disk storage), that can include multiple databases or tablespaces.



AUTOSYS COMPONENTS: Event Processor: This is main component of the autosys system. This

processes all the events it reads from dataserver. The event processor is the program, running either as a UNIX process or as a Windows service that actually runs AutoSys. It schedules and starts jobs. When you start the event processor it continually scans the database for events to be processed. When it finds one, it checks whether the event satisfies the starting conditions for any job in the database.

Remote Agent: On a UNIX machine, the remote agent is a temporary process started by the event processor to perform a specific task on a remote (client) machine. On a Windows machine, the remote agent is a Windows service running on a remote (client) machine that is directed by the event processor to perform specific tasks.The remote agent starts the command specified for a given job, sends running and completion information about a task to the event server, then exits. If the remote agent is unable to transfer the information, it waits and tries again until it can successfully communicate with the database.



LATEST AUTOSYS COMPONENTS: Application Server : A new component which handles

the Database connectivity for the AutoSys r11 clients, Command Line Utilities and the GUI's. It has a persistent connection to the DB to allow improved response speed. It also removes the requirement of having a global database user/password.

Event Server : The DB containing the events. Differences from 4.5 include vendor library files for the Server and client components.



BASIC FUNCTIONALITY OF AUTOSYS



EXPLANATION The event processor scans the event server for the next event to

process. If no event is ready, the event processor scans again in five seconds.

The event processor reads from the event server that an event is ready. If the event is a STARTJOB event, the job definition and attributes are retrieved from the Event Server, including the command and the pointer (full path name on the client machine) to the profile file to be used for the job. In addition, for jobs running on Windows machines, the event processor retrieves from the database the user IDs and passwords required to run the job on the client machine.

The event processor processes the event. If the event is a STARTJOB, the event processor attempts to establish a connection with the remote agent on the client machine, and passes the job attributes to the client machine.

The event processor sends a CHANGE_STATUS event marking in the event server that the job is in STARTING state.



EXPLANATION On a UNIX machine, the inetd invokes the remote agent. On a

Windows machine, the remote agent logs onto the machine as the user defined as the job’s owner, using the user IDs and passwords passed to it from the event processor.

The remote agent sends an acknowledgment back to the event processor indicating that it has received the job parameters. The socket connection is terminated. At this point, the event processor resumes scanning the event server database, looking for events to process.

The remote agent starts a process and executes the command in the job definition.

The remote agent issues a CHANGE_STATUS event marking in the event server that the job is in RUNNING state.

The client job process runs to completion, then returns an exit code to the remote agent and quits.



SCHEDULER Replaces the Event

Processor. A multi-threaded process which selects events from the Event Server and processes them. Changes from 4.5 include multiple event batching and dynamic thread creation.



AUTOSYS COMMAND LINE:Although Windows XP's "at" command or Korn

shell's "cron" allows you to run job at desired time - It lacks enterprise level job scheduling features. PLATINUM Technology might fill this gap by AutoSys.



AUTOSYS IS ... A full job scheduling and management system for

NT systems. Allows you create simple or complex sets of

instructions to automatically execute at regular intervals.

Allows you trigger jobs by date and time, file arrival, and other criteria.



AUTOSYS IS ... Like any scheduling product, AutoSys automatically

monitors your jobs. If needed, AutoSys can itself restart jobs that have failed, or cancelled, or were aborted for any reasons. For mission critical projects AutoSys also has a high availability option that will perform rollover of jobs to a backup server if your primary server fails. (Need clustering system like VCS - Veritas Clustering System). . .



DEFINING AUTOSYS JOB: By Autosys Web interface By AutoSys Graphical User Interface (GUI). By using AutoSys Job Information Language (JIL)

through a command-line interface.



AUTOSYS JOB TYPES AND STRUCTURES: There are three types of jobs:

Command, File Watcher Box.



Box Jobs : Container of other jobs (including other boxes), and box itself performs no actions, although it can trigger other jobs to run. An important feature of this type of job is that boxes can be put inside of other boxes

File Watcher Jobs : Watch for the arrival of a specified file.



DEFINING AUTOSYS JOB JIL stands for Job Information Language. Using this you can

instruct autosys to save job definitions. This information saved in autosys database. You can also create a jil file which contains job definition. You can then pass this jil file to autosys.

Essential attributes for defining job1. Job NameJIL Keyword : insert_job. Name used to identify the job.2. Job Typea. JIL Keyword : job_type. The job type is one of job types: command (c), file watcher (f) or box (b).3. Ownera. JIL Keyword : owner



DEFINING AUTOSYS JOB The job owner specifies whose user ID the command will be run

under on the client machine. This attribute is automatically set to the user who invoked jil or the GUI to define the job, and cannot be changed except by the edit superuser.

Other job attributes: 1. command: The command attribute can be the name of any

command, executable, UNIX shell script or batch file, and its arguments.2. machine: This attribute specifies the client machine on which the command should be run.3. date_condition: The start date/time dependencies attribute is a toggle, which specifies whether or not there are date, time, or both, conditions required for starting the job.4. days_of_week: The days of the week attribute specifies the days on which the job should be run.



AUTOSYS CLI SYNTAX:Here is a template file

that explains the syntax of Autosys JIL. (Job Information Language.)



AUTOYS JIL Sample jil file for command job echoJob.jil

insert_job:echoJob machine:unixMachine owner:username command:echo “Hello this is command job”

To add this job in atosys db. Run following command from unix: jil < echoJob.jil

This command will add “echoJob” job to autosys databse.



COMMANDS TO CONTROL THE JOB

Start job command sendevent –E FORCE_STARTJOB -J <job_name> sendevent -E STARTJOB -J <job_name>

To put jobs on OFF ICE or ON ICE sendevent -E OFF_ICE -J <job_name> sendevent -E ON_ICE -J <job_name> sendevent -E KILLJOB –J "Job Name Here"



MEANING OF AUTOSYS STATUS

STATUS AUTOSTATUS Meaning RU RUNNING Running ST STARTING Starting SU SUCCESS Success FA FAILURE Failure TE TERMINATED Terminated OI ON_ICE On Ice IN/td> INACTIVE Inactive AC/td> ACTIVATED Activated RE/td> RESTART Restart OH/td> ON_HOLD On Hold QW/td> QUE_WAIT Queue Wait RD/td> Refresh Dependencies RF Refresh Filewatcher



AUTOSYS STATUS ABBREVIATION:

The following table lists the abbreviations used in the ST (status) column of the autorep report, and gives the status for each abbreviation.

AC=ACTIVATED FA=FAILURE IN=INACTIVE OH=ON_HOLD OI=ON_ICE QU=QUE_WAIT RE=RESTART RU=RUNNING ST=STARTING SU=SUCCESS TE=TERMINATED



AUTOSYS GUIUnicenter AutoSys Job Management is an industry

standard job management system that provides exceptional reliability to support enterprise mission critical applications. Autosys is designed for distributed environments.



AUTOSYS GUIHere is a quick look at the GUI of Autosys. Although the screenshot is

not very clear, still it gives you the idea that the GUI is more or less similar to standard Windows or KDE Applications.



AUTOSYS RESPONDS TO THE FOLLOWING SIGNALS

ALARMCHANGE_PRIORITYCHANGE_STATUSCOMMENTDELETEJOBFORCE_STARTJOBJOB_OFF_HOLDJOB_OFF_ICEJOB_ON_HOLDJOB_ON_ICEKILLJOBSEND_SIGNALSET_GLOBALSTARTJOBSTOP_DEMON



WHERE TO FIND AUTOSYS ERRORS:

$AUTOSYS/out/DBMaint.out for DB problems. $AUTOUSER/out/event_demon.$AUTOSERV. $SYBASE/install/errorlog_$DSQUERY when event server will not

start.. ($AUTOUSER/out/event_demon.ACE). /tmp files created for job_run at client machine. NT: AutoNuTc\lib/X11\app-defaults\xpert. Output from the job definition output & error files.



AUTOSYS DEPENDENCIES:done(job). exitcode(job) > 5 and exitcode(job_b) != 10. failure(job_a) or f (job_b). notrunning (job). success (job) and s(job_b). terminated(job).

value(global_name)=100



ThanQ

Venkat Duvvuri

