Common MFT for z/OS configurations

An overview of the different Managed File Transfer configurations

Managed File Transfer uses agents attached to a queue manager for transferring data.

• One or more queue managers to transfer the data.
• A commands queue manager that issues requests. For example, a request to start a transfer is sent to this queue manager, and the associated commands are routed to the MFT agents.
• A coordination queue manager that manages the work.

There are three common Managed File Transfer (MFT) configurations:

1. A single queue manager with one or more agents using local connections. This might be used to put the contents of a data set into IBM MQ queues.
2. A single queue manager with an MFT client on a distributed machine using client bindings.
3. Two queue managers connected by channels, and one or more agents on each machine. These agents can be client or local bindings.

Note the following points:

1. MFT is written in Java, with some shell scripts and JCL to configure and operate MFT.
2. Db2 status and activity can be logged, and this can be stored in Db2 tables.
3. The person configuring MFT must be familiar with Unix System Services (USS). For example:
   • The directory structure with files with names like /u/userID/myfile.txt2
   • USS commands, such as:
     • cd (change directory)
     • ls (list)
     • chmod (change file permissions)
     • chown (change file ownership or groups that can access the file or directory)

4. The following products are required in USS to be able to configure and run MFT:
   • Java; for example, /java/java71_bit64_GA/J7.1_64/
   • IBM MQ V920, for example /mqm/V9R2M0.
   • Db2 JDBC libraries, if we want to use Db2 for status and history; for example /db2/db2v12/jdbc/lib

You need a coordination queue manager. However, we can use the same queue manager to run agents, to process commands, and for coordination. If we are using multiple queue managers, we must pick one to act as the coordinator.

Check the IBM MQ connectivity

If we have an existing MFT coordinator queue manager, we need connectivity between the queue manager where we are doing the configuration, and the coordinating and command queue managers.