Managing access to Host servers

[Evan Harris <spanner@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all

I have a customer who has been gradually consolidating an application from 
two boxes onto one. Both sets of users run the same core application, but 
are for all practical purposes separate business and have separate datasets 
and supporting programs.

The two business have different cycles and want to run their day end 
processes at separate times. Hictorically they have ended the QSERVER 
subsystem and the host servers and re-started them when required to prevent 
ODBC and the like causing file locking with the application processes and 
the end of day saves.

The question is now: how do they manage this for two discrete sets of users ?

Everything I have found so far tells me that it is not possible to have two 
separate sets of servers or QSERVER jobs, therefore I have to manage the 
access in some other way.

At the moment the probably plan of attack is to terminate the host server 
and QSERVER and disable the user profiles. When processing for the first 
day end is complete the profiles for that business will be enabled, and the 
second set enabled when their day end finishes. The user profiles will 
probably be identified using the accounting code, unless someone suggests a 
better way :)

Of course this only works because the day ends can commence at the same 
time, although I cannot count on this forever. How would I go about 
terminating one set of users if I wanted to use the approach above 
*without* actually downing the host servers for the unaffected application ?

At this stage the idea of tracking this and managing it via the exit 
programs (the only thing I can think of) is looking like a very uneconomic 
task (and daunting) task...

I am thinking that some of the security tools might help me here if they 
have the ability to turn accessibility off and on like this. Can they do 
this ? Do these applications have the ability to identify the users 
currently using the various server and perform and action on them like 
ending their jobs ?

I know that LPAR would get me around this but it's not an option right now. 
I'm not sure whether the independent ASP facility will help me, but I'm 
betting it probably won't as my understanding is that it shares these kind 
of functions (i.e. the servers) and essentially segregates user data on the 
same machine.

Any thoughts or experiences along these lines out there ?

regards
Evan Harris