What to study to move from security admin to production supp

Khalid Rehman · New User Joined: 07 Nov 2011 Posts: 1 Location: India

Dear Experts,

I am working as a information security admin on mainframe, since 2 yrs. however i want to go to in production support.

could you please assist, what should i study for entering into L1 support in mainframe production.

Regards,
Khalid.

dick scherrer · Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 7:07 pm

Hello and welcome to the forum,

Your question has been split into a new topic. When posting a question, please start a new topic for your question.

Suggest you talk with the people who currently have this position. They can tell you which things are needed to do well in that group.

Production support covers different responsibilities in different organizations.

Ed Goodman · Active Member Joined: 08 Jun 2011 Posts: 556 Location: USA

When you deal with that group today, what do you expect them to know?

The scheduler, JCL, some basic application debugging, tape management, disk management, phone systems, network operations (file transfers).

You also need them to be able to get on the phone and contact the external vendors and institutions your site works with.

They have to be easy to understand, and be able to work with all of the groups at your site.

So, all of those things is what you need to learn. But first, do like Dick says and get to know a few of them.

Then, get divorced, make sure you have no children or social life and no romantic interests. Because working prod support means you will never have the same schedule twice, can work any time of the day or night, including weekends, and that you are always either at work or sleeping.

Akatsukami · Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 8:08 pm

Now, now

It wasn't that bad when I was doing ADM (administration, development, and maintenance) for IBM 10-20 years ago; my marriage survived it (although not other things).

One other thing, Khalid; in production support, you may be given powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men (I had the ability to create, update, and delete RACF profiles). Learn to use those abilities before you need them; you may only get one chance to make a mistake.