Introduction to TRANSFER Delivery System

Introduction to TRANSFER Delivery System—109426 4-1

The TRANSFER Environment

Overview

TRANSFER system management and administration involves the following tasks:

■ Setting up the hardware and software configurations required to run TRANSFER

■ Starting and stopping TRANSFER and the applications that use it

■ Continuing administration and operations, such as determining problems, tuning,

and taking online dumps of database files

Each installation has at least one system administrator, who is responsible for registering

new correspondents with TRANSFER and solving problems that arise during routine

operations. For example, the system administrator might notice that mail delivery is

slow and ask correspondents to assign lower priority to long packages. At many

installations, the system administrator is an experienced PS MAIL user who has

administrative tasks.

Each installation has a system manager, possibly the same person who is system

administrator. The system manager must be familiar with the computer system and with

all the applications running at the site. The system manager is responsible for adding or

removing devices from the system, establishing the Transaction Monitoring Facility

(TMF) configuration by deciding which disks are to contain audited files and by

defining audit trails, scheduling online dumps and managing the tape library, monitoring

the system, and tuning the system or network for performance. As the workload in the

system grows, the system manager might have to increase the maximum number of

servers in a class or the number of asynchronous processes capable of delivering

packages.

In addition, each installation has at least one experienced computer operator who is

responsible for taking online dumps of the files in the TRANSFER database, for

performing recovery procedures in the event of a system crash, and for maintaining the

computer equipment at the site.