Clarify ZWES.IS and ZWESIS_STD

[hockeyrob]

Description

The name of the cross-memory server (resource) is defined here as ZWES.IS, but in the YAML file the server is defined as ZWESIS_STD. Should these names be the same, or should there be more documentation describing the connection between them?

Pages to Update

https://docs.zowe.org/stable/user-guide/configure-zos-system/#configure-the-cross-memory-server-for-saf

Expected behavior

This needs more documentation to say what these names are, whether they should be the same and/or how they are related to each other. I don't want to try to start this STC until I know I have the proper definitions in RACF. And then there's the CDT; how does that relate to these two? haven't found any documentation describing the connection among them.

[nannanli]

@1000TurquoisePogs @Joe-Winchester Could you help with the questions above? Thanks!

[Joe-Winchester]

Thanks for creating the issue. To help with understanding the ZIS server (which used to be called the cross memory server) is the blog post https://medium.com/zowe/configuring-the-zowe-cross-memory-server-a5b86cc6981b that was written a while ago but is still relevant. In the blog it talks about ZWESVSTC which was the v1 name of the Zowe main started task, and in v2 it's changed to ZWESLSTC. We should probably write an updated v2 blog, or else better still update the docs.

Your question is about about the ZWES.IS RACF class, the definition ZWESIS_STC in the zowe.yaml configuration file, and what their relationship is.

Some background:

The ZIS server makes APF authorized calls, and to protect it from being used by anyone and everyone it guards access by insisting that clients making calls to it have read access to ZWES.IS. In Zowe's case the client is the server STC ZWESVSTC (or ZWESLSTC for v2 and HA). In almost call cases the ZWESLSTC STC run under functional user ID ZWESVUSR, so this user ID needs READ access to the RACF facility class ZWES.IS.

PERMIT ZWES.IS CLASS(FACILITY) ID('ZWESVUSR') ACCESS(READ)

The second question you've asked is about the attribute zowe.zss.crossMemoryServerName: ZWESIS_STC in zowe.yaml This name is unrelated to anything to do with RACF security and is the actual name of the program that the ZIS server starts (under the ZWESISTC started task, against which the ZSS server component running under the ZWESVSTC/ZWESLSTC STC attaches to by name.
When the ZWESISTC PROCLIB starts the name assigned to its program is defined in line 1 of the JCL, e.,g, This name is then used by the crossMemoryServerName in zowe.yaml (that drives the configuration of the ZWESLSTC) to attach to.

Most of the time you don't need to change this from the default of ZWESIS_STC however, in environments such as Zowe Development where we may be running one version of ZIS with some functionality and another ZIS with a different set (for example v1 and v2) we will then choose to use ZWESIS_01 and ZWESIS_02 by convention. In that case we need two proclibs each with different named ZIS servers, and also different zowe.yaml files.

A good message to look for in your ZWESLSTC is ZWES1014I that shows the attaching of the two servers. In the screen shot below you can see my ZWESLSTC for my Zowe v2 attaching successfully. This is because I have overidden the crossMemoryServerName in my zowe.yaml to explicitly point to my v2 named program

@hockeyrob I hope this helps ! In the meantime @nannanli can you leave this issue open and when we do the ZIS configuration video we can use this as a reminder to work on a doc update at the same time.