Control M Interview Questions & Answers

Question 1. What Is Control-m?

Answer :

CONTROL-M is a business integrated scheduling product that focuses on the production environment business applications and platforms. In simple terms "It is a scheduling software like many others (autosys, cron, OPC..etc) using which we can schedule our taskto run them automatically without manual intervention."

Question 2. What Are The Default Port Numbers From Server To Agent And Agent To Server?

Answer :

CONTROL-M/Server and CONTROL-M/Agent communicate by means of two TCP/IPports. They are "Server-to-Agent Port" and "Agent-to-Server Port". The default"Server-to-Agent Port Number" is 7006 and "Agent-to-Server Port Number" is 7005. Normally these values will be in the range of  1025 to 65535 [inclusive].

Question 3. What Are Control M Components?

Answer :

• CONTROL-M/Enterprise Manager (CONTROL-M/EM)
• CONTROL-M/Servers
• CONTROL-M/Agents and Remote hosts
• Control Modules

Question 4. Explain Architecture Of Control M?

Answer :

Control-M is a 3 tier architecture. Here you have to explain about the componentsof Control-M (EM, Server and Agents).

Question 5. What Is Datacenter?

Answer :

• Control-M datacenter is comprised of Control-M/Server, Database, and Control-M/Agents.
• If you see the diagram here,you can observe 2 datacenters in that picture.
• Normally we will be having different datacenters for Test, Dev, Prod.. etc. in someorganizations for few critical applications they may maintain a differentdatacenter.
• Datacenter design is completely depend upon the organizations design plan forscheduling solution.

Question 6. What Are The Control-m Accessories?

Answer :

• Control-M/Enterprise Manager GUI (EM/GUI or ECS GUI), Gateways, Global AlertServer (GAS), Global Condition Server (GCS) and Control-M GUI Server.
• It is important to understand what each of these components does and its place inthe Control-M architecture.

Question 7. What Is Gas?

Answer :

• Expansion of GAS is Global Alert Server. This is one of the components of Control-MEM Server.
• This will be used to store all the alerts generated from datacenters under theControl-M EM.
• In Control-M/EM (AJF) Scheduling tab will be replaced by ACTIVE tab.
• Apart from these based on the job type we'll be getting additional tabs.

Question 8. What Is Retro Option?

Answer :

If you select this "Retro" option in Scheduling tab, job can be scheduled to run evenafter actual scheduling date has been passed. 

Ex: If a job scheduled to run on 20th of every month, but on 20th the Control-MServer is down, and Came up on 21st or later, then while performing the New dayProcess Control-M will check for this option and bring the job into AJF though thejob scheduled date has been crossed.

Question 9. What Is Forecast?

Answer :

Additional feature control-m has to foresee the job schedule.

You can see this option in 'Scheduling' tab of the job properties dialog box. Whenyou click on this option it will show you next 12 months schedule of the job basedon the options you have specified in this tab. 

Using this you can make sure your scheduling criteria is perfect as per the userrequest.

Question 10. What Is Meant By Agent Or Node? Is There Any Difference?

Answer :

• It is the target system where the control-m job is going to execute.
• Agent or Node both is same.

Question 11. Difference Between Node And Node Group?

Answer :

Node is a Single Agent whereas Node Group is a collection of agents (more than 1agent).

Question 12. What Is “wait For Confirmation”? What Is The Use Of It?

Answer :

It is similar to a HOLD but the job won't be in Held Status.

Sometimes if any manual confirmation is required before executing a job, we'll use"Wait for confirmation" in Execution tab. 

If you select this option, the job will turn in "PINK" color.

You have to Right click and "Confirm" the job to run (it may go in Wait status, if ithas any other prerequisite conditions or time dependency)

Question 13. What Is Maxwait?

Answer :

Maximum number of days that the job can wait to be executed after its original scheduled date has passed.

Question 14. How Many Types Of Conditions You Use In Control-m?

Answer :

2 types.

Prerequisite Conditions and Global Conditions

• Prerequisite Conditions scope will be in the same server/datacenter
• Global Conditions scope will be across servers/datacenters

Question 15. What Are Global Conditions?

Answer :

• If you would like to make dependency across the datacenter, then you have to useGlobal Conditions.
• These Global Conditions needs to be defined using Tools -> Global Conditionsoption.

Question 16. Types Of Conditions In Condition Tab?

Answer :

2 types. In Condition and Out Condition.

• In Conditions are of Predecessor job(s)
• Out Conditions are for Successor job(s)

Question 17. What Are Resources? And How Many Types Of Resources Are Available In Control-m?

Answer :

Resources will be used to make mutual exclusive jobs (jobs not to run at the sametime).

There are 2 types or resources.

1. Quantitative Resources and
2. Control Resources 

Question 18. Explain Control And Quantitative Resources?

Answer :

Control Resources are the ones which you can specify the type of control the jobsneeds (Exclusive or Shared). They are often used to represent files, or databasetables.

Quantitative Resources are resource definitions for which you specify inCONTROL-M/EM an overall quantity available to the CONTROL-M, and the amountrequired by the job in the Resource tab. Examples of quantitative resources youmight define are CPU (%) , RAM (MB) , Hard Disk (GB) , and Tape Drives (#).

Question 19. Use Of Set Tab?

Answer :

It will be used to define variables to pass as parameters to the jobs.

Question 20. What Do You Mean By Auto-edit Variable?

Answer :

AutoEdit variables are resolved at time of job submission, during job execution, orimmediately following job execution (depending on the variable).

These can be used to send as parameters to jobs.

Question 21. What Is Postproc Tab?

Answer :

• This tab is used to send Alerts or Shouts to GAS or Shout Destinations (Mail or Page Or Message) based on the event defined.
• Possible events are on Job ended " OK " or " NOT OK " or " Rerun " or " Not Submitted On time " or " Not Completed On time " or " Executing for Long time ".

Question 22. What Is Compstat?

Answer :

It is a Control-M variable which will holds the job Return Code of the current run.

Question 23. What Is Maybe Condition?

Answer :

If you would like to add a In Condition only if the predecessor job exist else ignorecondition, then you have to use May Be Condition.

It is nothing but a Conditional Dependency.

Ex: If JOB-B is depending on JOB-A, but JOB-B have to wait on ONLY when JOB-A isin AJF. In this case we'll give Out Condition of JOB-A as #-JOB-A-OK and inCondition of JOB-B as #-JOB-A-OK 

If you add #- before the condition name that will be taken into account only whenthe job is in AJF.