A Mainframer's Musings

Most of us, who were trained in mainframe and got into development, must have studied a small introduction to mainframe infrastructure. Usually, that knowledge is neither extensive nor exhaustive to perform any significant infrastructure activity.   However, over the years, while you start performing architecture-related works, there will be a need to collaborate with the infrastructure team(s) to either create a solution or try out a proof of concept or technology. This collaboration is inevitable especially if you have chosen a path of mainframe modernization. Hence a little bit of knowledge and further reading on infrastructure always helps. This will aid you to use some jargons and terminologies that are closer to the infrastructure person and will help you to build a better collaboration with them. The next question then would be how much is "a little bit of knowledge". It is usually subjective, but I will list some of the following indicative knowledge that can be acq...

You probably guessed what my answer to this question would be. It's a YES. The subsequent question that pops up in our minds is what I should learn or what skills to acquire. The good news is that you already know the concepts of DevOps if you have coded something and have gone through the "processes" of deploying your compiled, tested, accepted code into a production environment.  These "processes" typically involve you filling either some forms or entering information in an in-house or a standard tool. These "filled forms" are then processed by an "appropriate approver" for your line of business and then the "deployment/production operations team" will do the migration to the production region in an "allowed window of time". If you automate and/or expedite these "processes" with help of standard tools to result in minimal human intervention yet achieve the effectiveness of the manual reviews and checks, tha...