Control-M
Control-M from BMC is one of the most widely used workload schedulers. It runs and monitors jobs on z/OS, Linux, Windows and cloud services from one place, and links them with conditions.
The pieces
- Control-M/Enterprise Manager — the central management layer and the GUI where you monitor and change jobs.
- Control-M/Server — schedules jobs for the distributed environment.
- Agents — small programs on each server that actually run the jobs.
- Control-M for z/OS — the mainframe component that submits and tracks JCL jobs.
- Helix Control-M — BMC's SaaS version of the same product.
Folders, jobs and conditions
Jobs live in folders (older versions called them tables). Dependencies are expressed as conditions: when a job ends OK it adds an out-condition such as LOADTXN-ENDED-OK; the next job lists that as an in-condition and waits for it. Conditions carry the order date (ODAT), so Monday's jobs wait for Monday's conditions.
Everyday actions
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Hold / Free | Pause a job before it runs, then release it |
| Rerun | Run a failed job again, optionally from a step |
| Set to OK | Mark a job as ended OK without running it — use with care |
| Why | Shows what the job is still waiting for |
| Order / Force | Add a job to today's plan; Force ignores its scheduling criteria |
| Log / Output | Read the job's history and its sysout |
Jobs as code
The Control-M Automation API lets teams define jobs in JSON, keep them in Git and deploy them through a pipeline, just like application code.
{
"PAYROLL_NIGHT": {
"Type": "Folder",
"LOADTXN": {
"Type": "Job:Command",
"Command": "/apps/pay/bin/loadtxn.sh",
"RunAs": "payops",
"Host": "payhost01"
}
}
}Common mistakes
Forcing a job that is already in today's plan creates a second copy that may run and duplicate output. Check the plan first.
Removing or adding conditions by hand changes what runs. Use Why to understand the wait, then fix the cause.
A condition with the wrong ODAT will never satisfy the waiting job. Check dates when a job waits forever.
What you will see at work
- Expect to spend your first weeks in the Control-M monitoring views, learning which folders belong to which applications.
- Many sites restrict Set to OK and Force to senior operators.
- Alerts from Control-M often feed ticketing tools such as ServiceNow automatically.
Key terms
Check your understanding.
Take this lesson's quiz and save your progress. Free.