Hi,

Is z/VM requited, or will it work on zLinux installed in an LPAR?
What versions of zLinux are supported?

Gadi

-----Original Message-----
From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael 
MacIsaac
Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2017 2:41 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Announcing zoom and zuess 3.0

Hello linux-390 and IBMBM lists,

zoom (System z object-oriented management) and zuess (System z user-enabled
self-service) are
open-source packages that provide "Private Cloud" on IBM mainframe hardware, 
the z/VM hipervisor and the GNU/Linux operating system - arguably the most 
solid and mature virtualization trio on earth. They provide three interfaces 
for systems management of Linux on the
mainframe:
  1) Command line (zoom)
  2) Web UI       (zuess)
  3) RESTful API  (zuess)

Together, they create a "self-service portal", where end users can build new 
Linux systems*, rebuild*, destroy* power-on and off, add and remove CPUs and 
memory non-disruptively, and report on these systems. It also has a complete 
"cookbook" with a user guide and command reference.
(* some code has to be written by the user)

Also supported are:
  -) An authentication/authorization mechanism for operations on data or systems
  -) Ability to run Linux or z/VM commands and copy files with "passwordless" 
SSH
  -) Inline Web editing of metadata fields "description" and "owner"
  -) Quotas for CPUs and memory used by Linux group
  -) A second level arbitrary grouping mechanism below Linux groups
  -) A locking mechanism for systems being operated on
  -) User preferences
  -) z/VM DASD, FCP and OSA device reporting
  -) Monitoring, Software as a Service and live guest relocation are works in 
progress

The main Web page is https://sourceforge.net/projects/system-zoom/
The document in PDF:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/system-zoom/files/zoom.pdf/download
The download page is https://sourceforge.net/projects/system-zoom/files/

You should see six files available for download:
  README.txt             Basic information - this file
  zoom-3-XX.s390x.rpm    The "back-end" RPM  - CLI to be installed on a
zLinux system
  zuess-3-XX.s390x.rpm   The "front-end" RPM - Web UI to be installed on
same zLinux system
  zoom.pdf               The documentation - if you just want to read about
it
  zoom.tgz               Tar file with zoom code - if you just want to see
the CLI code
  zuess.tgz              Tar file with zuess code - if you just want to see
the UI code

The version was bumped to 3 because of the new "zoom tree" data structure.
To create a zoom cluster of multiple z/VM systems, one zoom server on one z/VM 
system calls the "zaddserver" command to combine another zoom server on a 
different z/VM LPAR. The first server becomes to be the "primary", and the 
second server becomes the "secondary". The primary server can then add any 
number of additional servers on different z/VM LPARs which all become 
"tertiary". The primary and secondary servers each maintain an identical copy 
of the complete zoom tree. Each tertiary server only maintains a tree with 
clients on that z/VM LPAR. Think of this as an active-active configuration. 
Should the primary server fail, the secondary will be a hot standby. It should 
be possible to create a Virtual IP address (VIP) that would load balance 
between the two servers.  For data reliability and operation integrity, when 
clients (managed guests) are being operated on, they are locked. So if two 
administrators try to reboot the same client, the first one will succeed, and 
the second one will get a “system is locked”
message. Locks are
maintained on the primary sever, but if it is down, they are maintained on the 
secondary.

The zuess Web User Interface was designed with the goal of giving users in an 
organization Self-Service portal to z/VM and zLinux resources. It requires that 
a Web server be running on the zoom server (only Apache has been tested).

With version 3.0, access to the Web UI is split into two categories
 (1) Read-only - the home page and any other page that does not perform 
operations is in a  directory (usually /srv/www/cgi-bin/) open to all users. No 
audit trail is needed, so no  user/group information is available.

 (2) Read-write - any page that performs any operation or makes any change to 
the tree is in  a directory that is password protected (usually 
/srv/www/cgi-bin/zuess/).
Once the user
 supplies valid credentials, the user name is maintained along with their 
primary and secondary  groups. An audit trail is maintained in the zoom log 
file (usually /var/log/zoom.log).

OK, that's probably enough description.  Phil Tully and I presented on this at 
the last SHARE and MVMUA.  Both were pretty well received. Unfortunately, no 
more presentations are planned at this time.

If anyone does get it set up, please let me know.  What would be great is a 
contribution of some Linux/VM code to do build (clone to new VM), rebuild 
(clone to
existing) and destroy. All
of those operations are outlined in the file /usr/local/src/userexits.stubs. It 
would have to be copied to userexits.local. What we do in house is put a 
message on the zoom server's console, IBM OpsMgr traps it and calls the 
appropriate REXX EXEC.  I'd imagine the sample code could use PROP instead.  A 
free six-pack of the beer of your choice to the first person to do that!

A great goal would be to get to a series of three one hour labs where (1) 
Linux/zoom/zuess are installed, (2) a zoom tree is created and the Web UI set 
up, and (3) all the teams in the class cluster the zoom servers together.  
Wouldn't that be cool to come back from SHARE or VM Workshop and say "Yeah, I 
set up Private Cloud on the mainframe in three hours with open source tools"?  
Simultaneously, that exercise would help drive out the bugs which are certainly 
there.

C'mon community, stop letting "distributed" beat us at Cloud!

--
     -Mike MacIsaac

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