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.. © Copyright IBM Corporation 2020,2021                                     .
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Requirements of managed nodes
=============================

The tasks in the **IBM® z/OS® CICS® collection** can be classified into two 
types that have different requirements of the managed node. 

CMCI tasks
----------

The CMCI tasks in the **IBM® z/OS® CICS® collection** interact
with the managed node over an HTTP connection by leveraging the `CMCI REST API`_.
Therefore, an SSH connection is not required. Instead, you can delegate
Ansible tasks to run on the control node, for example, by specifying
``delegate_to: 'localhost'`` for the task in the playbook. In this case, you
install dependencies on your localhost instead of the managed node.
For more ways of delegating tasks, see `Controlling where tasks run`_.

The requirements of the managed node are as follows:

* IBM CICS V4.2 or later
* A `CMCI connection`_ must be set up in either a CICSplex or a stand-alone CICS region
* Python module dependencies:

  * `requests`_
  * `xmltodict`_
  * `typing`_ (For Python versions < 3.5)

  If you delegate the tasks to run on your localhost, the Python module dependencies
  need to be installed on your localhost instead.

  You can install them from CLI:

  * If your Python version is no less than 3.5:

    .. code-block:: sh

       pip install requests xmltodict

  * If your Python version < 3.5:

    .. code-block:: sh

       pip install requests xmltodict typing


  You can also install them using the playbook. For example, this `CICS
  sample playbook`_ shows how you can ensure the pre-requisites are installed before the module is executed.

.. _requests:
   https://pypi.org/project/requests/

.. _xmltodict:
   https://pypi.org/project/xmltodict/

.. _typing:
   https://pypi.org/project/typing/
   
.. _CICS sample playbook:
   https://github.com/IBM/z_ansible_collections_samples/tree/main/zos_subsystems/cics/cmci/reporting

If you only use the CMCI tasks in the CICS collection but don't delegate the CMCI tasks to your localhost, your managed node must also follow the `IBM z/OS core managed node requirements`_ except that IBM Z Open Automation Utilities (ZOAU) is not required.

.. _z/OS OpenSSH:
   https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/latest?topic=descriptions-zos-openssh

.. _CMCI connection:
   https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cics-ts/latest?topic=configuring-setting-up-cmci

.. _CMCI REST API:
   https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cics-ts/latest?topic=cmci-how-it-works-rest-api

.. _IBM z/OS core managed node requirements:
   https://ibm.github.io/z_ansible_collections_doc/ibm_zos_core/docs/source/requirements_managed.html
.. _Controlling where tasks run:
   https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/user_guide/playbooks_delegation.html#delegating-tasks


Provisioning tasks
------------------

The provisioning tasks in the **IBM® z/OS® CICS® collection** interact with a 
z/OS managed node over SSH and therefore have different requirements to the 
CMCI tasks. The provisioning modules follow the requirements of the other z/OS 
collections as documented in `IBM z/OS core managed node requirements`_.

These requirements include an installation of the following components:

* z/OS
* z/OS OpenSSH
* IBM Open Enterprise SDK for Python (previously IBM Open Enterprise Python for z/OS)
* IBM Z Open Automation Utilities (ZOAU)
* The z/OS shell

For specific versions of these dependencies and additional information, review 
the `IBM z/OS core managed node requirements`_ page.