Adding an IBM® Cloud Provisioning and Management for z/OS template for use with z/OS Provisioning Toolkit

The foundation of provisioning with z/OS PT is a z/OSMF template. The template pulls in the z/OSMF workflows and associated actions and variables that define both the environment to be provisioned, and how you want to provision it. You load the template into z/OSMF by using the z/OSMF web interface. After you load a template, you can use z/OS PT to build an image based on that template.

Before you begin

Before you add a Cloud Provisioning template, follow the steps here: Preparing to use z/OS Provisioning Toolkit with IBM Cloud Provisioning and Management for z/OS.

About this task

For a reminder of how templates work with z/OS PT, see What is z/OS Provisioning Toolkit?.

The following procedure summarizes how to add a template to z/OSMF and prepare it to use with z/OS PT. For more information about how to complete each step, see z/OSMF product documentation.

For a walk-through of the process by using either a CICS® or z/OS Connect EE template, see Adding a CICS template by using IBM Cloud Provisioning and Management for z/OS or Adding a z/OS Connect Enterprise Edition template by using IBM Cloud Provisioning and Management for z/OS.

Procedure

  1. Prepare a template for use with z/OSMF.
    Use the *.properties file to customize the workflow to create an environment that meets your company standards.
  2. Log on to the z/OSMF web interface and add the template.
    Go to Cloud Provisioning > Software Services and select the Templates tab. Select Add Template to add the template.
  3. Ensure that all owners of the user IDs in the workflow approve the template.
  4. Associate the template with a tenant.
    During this step, you can set limits for how many times the container can be provisioned and how many containers each user can provision. The association automatically creates a resource pool for the template and the network administrator is notified.
  5. Make sure that the necessary network resources are allocated to the resource pool for the template.
    This step must be completed by a network administrator.
  6. After the template is approved and the network resources are allocated, test the template before you publish it to users in the tenant.
    To test the template, build an image that references the template name and run the zospt run command with the --draft option. If you did not use the default domain and tenant, you must update your .profile in z/OS UNIX System Services to add the following environment variables: 
    zospt_domain=zospt_domain_name
zospt_tenant=zospt_tenant_name

    For more information about building an image to run a template, see Building an image with z/OS Provisioning Toolkit.

  7. After your testing is complete, use the z/OSMF web interface to publish the template for all users in the tenant to use.

What to do next

Use z/OS PT to build images from the template that you loaded. See Building an image with z/OS Provisioning Toolkit for details.