You can use the agent for z/OS  - aka D-Driven - to schedule work using IBM Workload Scheduler. You install and configure the agent for z/OS in the z/OS system and this work as any other dynamic agent. ​As soon as it is configured, the agent automatically links with the dynamic domain manager component of IBM Workload Scheduler through the HTTP or HTTPS protocols. With the agent for z/OS you can define jobs and schedules on IBM Workload Scheduler and submit a subset of the jobs to a z/OS system and you run the planning tasks on IBM Workload Scheduler while the execution is demanded to the z/OS system. 

Securing communications in the Workload Automation environment is an essential step to meet your company’s security requirements. Does Workload Automation use a secure communication mechanism? The answer is yes! All communication is implemented over SSL protocol TLSv1.2. Read this blog to find out how to implement security correctly in a v9.5 environment by customizing default certificates.

“Mainframe essentially keeps the world running."
It may sound bold but it’s true. The quote above, which is from an IBM executive , Philip MacLochlainn, is indeed supported by stunning figures: “85% of all credit cards, 29 billion ATM transactions per year, 92 of the top 100 banks ... 12 billion passenger flights are booked” thanks to mainframe. And it makes no wonder to whom is familiar with mainframe’s history and the story of workload scheduling and management, which we contributed to write.

LET’S INTRODUCE what’s new
Get familiar with the new concepts introduced by Workload Automation on Cloud that leverage the 9.5 Fix Pack 1 on-premise version, released in July:

• Subscription folder: to increase business agility and enforce the security of your subscription, Workload Automation on Cloud introduces workflow folders for job streams and jobs.

Nowadays, industries move towards microservice and cloud native architectures that makes use of containers to scale and deploy applications. But containers have its own challenges and adds complexity to the infrastructure to maintain especially in large dynamic environments (if you are not familiar with containers and Kubernetes don’t worry: catch up with our latest post, Containers and Workload Automation 101). 

IBM Z Workload Scheduler collects many information about its workload execution and data base definitions in different formats. You can obtain info from messages issued on SYSTEM and/or on IzWS product LOG, or you can obtain it from AUDIT function reports. 
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Starting from this info, an analysis can be done to better tuning workload, prevent problems and so on.  

​You have heard a lot about containers in the last years, but you still do not know how you can leverage them with Workload Automation? This is the right place to start then.  
We collected the most frequent questions our users do when we talk about containers.