Best on a laptop or desktop. The terminals, code editors and papers need a keyboard. On a phone you can look around and practise.
Palm ForgeMainframe practice How it works What it costs Sign in
The proving ground for mainframe engineers.
A practice and certification platform for mainframe engineers: operators, administrators, programmers and DBAs. Find out where you stand, then work the failures that break real banks — abends, broken COBOL, a cutover weekend going wrong — until they stop being frightening.
Eighteen questions, about fifteen minutes. A starting estimate, not a verdict. The free tier is real — Google sign-in, no card.
How it works
Find your level
Eighteen adaptive questions, about fifteen minutes. It opens hard and narrows until the estimate settles. There is no pass or fail — it is a starting point, and guessing only buys you a wrong one.
Work the real failures
A roadmap built from what the placement found. Triage an incident under the clock, walk an abend to its root cause, repair COBOL so it survives production, run a console. Every attempt is scored and the gaps come back round.
Prove it
Sit a certification when the practice says you are ready. Every credential is publicly verifiable by link, so an employer can check it without taking your word or ours.
What you will actually be doing
Eleven kinds of practice, and one campaign that puts them in the order a real migration happens.
Incident Triage
Severity, owning tribe, first action — under the clock.
Abend Autopsy
Walk the evidence, declare the root cause, pick the fix.
Code Clinic
Broken COBOL, JCL, SQL. Repair it so it survives production.
War Room
A major incident in motion. Every call moves trust and stability.
Speed Drill
Rapid-fire calls against the clock. Accuracy is the score.
Ops Console
A live console and a queue of objectives. Type what an operator types.
Block Builder
Drag the pieces into the right order. No syntax to memorise — the shape is the lesson.
Pathway
Every correct command moves you down the road. Wrong turns cost you distance.
The Forge
Endless generated practice. Every item is built fresh, so the bank never runs out.
Blank Page
Reconstruct it from memory, then compare against the source. The hardest and the most useful.
Green Screen
A simulated ISPF session: panels, a command line, PF keys. It responds the way ISPF does; it is not connected to a z/OS system.
Migration Gauntlet
The freeze, the cutover weekend, day one, the first month-end. In order. No skips.
Find yourself here
Most of the practice is on the mainframe itself. Around it sit the systems a mainframe engineer works alongside every day — they are here because production incidents cross them.
the mainframe
IBM Z Platform
z/OS, CICS, Db2, RACF, storage, CA-View, Endevor, capacity
Production Operations & Batch
24x7 operations, CA-7, batch recovery, consoles, weekend cycles
Connectivity & Security
Network, Connect:Direct, SFTP, certificates, PGP, vulnerability
around the mainframe
Distributed & Cloud Platform
Windows, Linux, AWS, SQL Server, Aurora, Java/.NET, SSIS/SSRS
DevOps & Observability
Deployment automation, CI/CD, Dynatrace, CloudWatch, AIOps
Service Operations & Resilience
L1, ITSM, major incidents, DR/BCP, reporting, vendors
What it costs
Prices include GST. A tax invoice is raised for every payment.
Free
₹0
no card, no end date
The introductory curriculum, up to level two. Meant to be usable rather than a demonstration.
Start freeCertification voucher
₹2,999.00
for 30 days · GST included
One certification sitting, at any level, and then it is spent. Practice access stays on the free tier. For somebody who learned on the job.
Sign in to buyPractitioner
₹4,999.00
for 60 days · GST included
Everything an operator meets on shift, to level three. No certification.
Sign in to buyProfessional
₹11,999.00
for 90 days · GST included
The whole bank to level five, and every track.
Sign in to buyStart on the free tier and see how far it gets you before deciding — you can move up at any time and nothing you have earned is lost. This is digital content, so an unused purchase can be refunded within 4 weeks; once used, even one question, it cannot. Plans do not renew on their own: nothing is charged again unless you pay again, and you keep what you paid for until the period ends.
For organizations
Buy seats, assign them to your people, and move one to a replacement when somebody leaves. The Command Center shows rankings, strengths and weaknesses per skill, and how diligently each person practises, day by day.
Seats are billed to the organisation on one invoice. A seat nobody has started can be given back.
google sign-in · your work domainStart where you are
Fifteen minutes tells you your level. The free tier tells you whether this is for you. Neither costs anything.