by Pluto Zhang, Zowe community member and IBM developer

This blog post originally ran on the IBM Developer blog earlier today.

Zowe™, a project of the Open Mainframe Project™, is now available on IBM Z Trial. You can get your hands on a Zowe trial on demand at no charge. This trial environment is a fully configured z/OS environment with Zowe preinstalled and set up along with a set of integrated hands-on tutorials. You can start your Zowe trial experience within hours of completing a simple registration to be assigned with a trial system for 3 days.

Figure 1. zTrial wizard for Zowe

Register and try it out

Explore the project first

In this Zowe trial, you can experience cloud-like modern interfaces that Zowe provides for interacting and working with z/OS. You will also learn how to create and extend Zowe using sample plug-ins and extensions. This trial environment includes a sample Node.js API, a sample web application plug-in, as well as a sample Zowe Command Line Interface (CLI) extension along with all required resources and files.

The trial offers a set of basic scenarios with easy-to-follow instructions that explain how to complete the following tasks. Each scenario takes about 15-20 minutes.

Get started with Zowe, including Zowe Desktop and Zowe CLI

Extend Zowe with new APIs

Extend Zowe Desktop with new web application

Extend Zowe CLI with new CLI commands

New to Zowe? No problem! You can get to know the modern Zowe interfaces through several simple tasks in the “Getting started with Zowe” scenario.

Figure 2. Getting started with Zowe scenario

Already familiar with Zowe? You can learn how to extend Zowe by creating your own APIs and applications by following the step-by-step instructions provided.

Figure 3. Extending Zowe API scenario

Figure 4. Extending Zowe Application Framework scenario

Figure 5. Extending Zowe CLI scenario

We hope you find this trial program informative in getting started with Zowe as you kick-start your journey toward becoming a developer, extender, and/or contributor to this new open source project on z/OS.

Register and try it now!

To learn more about the Open Mainframe Project, click here. To learn more about Zowe, click here.

Zowe™, the Zowe™ logo, and the Open Mainframe Project™ are trademarks of The Linux® Foundation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.