Is there a DFSMS realtime log similar to SMF.

vasanthz · Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 5:10 pm

Hi,

Could you please let me know if DFSMS produces a log of the events on DASD, like dataset creation, deletion, migration,
space allocated to a dataset, space used etc.. something like SMF log.? Some log that has real time information.

I tried learning the capabilities of DFSMS, but its capabilities seems to be many, so thought of asking for a direction to proceed.
publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dgt1u104/CCONTENTS

Thanks & Regards,
Vasanth.S.

expat · Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 5:22 pm

Unfortunately not, everything that happens will (hopefully) be recorded via SMF.

Yes, SMS can be confusing at first, but once you get the basics understood it is quite easy after that. The real knack of storage management is finding out about how to treat the data.

vasanthz · Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 5:50 pm

Expat,
Thanks for your time replying. It was helpful. Let me check if the SMF has the information I needed.

Thanks,

expat · Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 5:58 pm

What is it that you want to know ?

vasanthz · Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 6:21 pm

Hi,

We currently use a product by CA. This product is realtime and writes information records to a log when datasets are created and also writes records when datasets are deleted. So basically its an event driven product.

The information written on the log are details like, the amount of space allocated, used, volser and some other fields.

This product is about to be decommisioned, so I was looking for an alternative way of tracking events like dataset creation, deletion & space used.

I guess the current product has a hook or plug-in kind of interface with some utility like DFSMS, i really dont know

Robert Sample · Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 6:26 pm

I've never dealt with the product, but it's most likely looking at the SMF data before it gets written. You're probably not going to find a real-time replacement without spending the $ for a software product, but you can analyze the SMF records generated each day to get this type of data.

vasanthz · Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 8:59 pm

Hi,

I did some searching on reading SMF records for this requirement and landed on home.pacbell.net/mcleary/freeware.html

There was a utility called Dataset Audit Facility (DAF) which does dataset tracking from SMF records. The tool was in Assembler with combined 11000 lines of code..!! using 34 record types and not to mention their sub-types

I will go through the 11K lines and post the review after few months or more

Pete Wilson · Posted: Mon Aug 16, 2010 7:58 pm

MXG (Merrills) (if you have it) is probably one of the easiest starting point to deal with your SMF data as it is has many pre-prepared reports covering most things.

Sounds like the CA product might have been Quota (or whatever CA call it now, probably Brighstor something or rather)? That allows real time tracking of DASD for every allocate/delete/extend using IGGPRE/POST aalocation exist. You can optionall set quota's to prevent certain accounts usng more than a pre-defined limit of DASD. The account names are generated based on many variables including dsnames (or parts) and RACF info etc and you can have set and subset accounts. It also shows high-water marks and provides trending info. Quite useful but a significant overhead on the system if it's busy. There are other versions of this around by other vendors to like DTS Software and BMC. On balance I don't think they're necessary except in perhaps test environments where you get 'rogue' users eating up all the DASD. It's just as effective to name and shame them especially if it's affected lots of other users. They'll soon change their ways.

Do you have a capacity planning type department? They should have information to predict upcoming usage so you can position your SMS configuration accordingly. They might also be producing something like the reports you're after from SMF.

vasanthz · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 4:33 pm

Hi,
Thanks for your thoughts Pete. We do have MXG at our shop.
Are you aware of any MXG module name that does this dataset tracking.

I belong to "some sort" of a capacity planning team.

Thanks & Regards,

expat · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 4:36 pm

You need to speak to your capacity planning / performance management people to know exactly what data they retain. It is highly likely that the information that you need will ne easily available in the MXG SAS databases.

Obviously they will need to tell you the dataset and SAS names to use.

dick scherrer · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:05 pm

Sounds like Vasanth has been volunteered for the newly forming capacity planning effort. . .

vasanthz · Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 2:19 pm

Yes D, U do possess some telepathical psychic powers

I was into COBOL, SAS, but now moved into resource measurement few months back.

Here is the story:
There was a glitch in decommisioning one of the existent software.
We were using a product A. And management has decided to scrap it and buy product B. Product A measures DASD utilisation as datasets were created realtime. Product B also does it, but it uses DCOLLECT in batch, so it was not realtime and measures only at 3 or 4 hour intervals. So I was looking around if I can find some alternate easier way of doing that. I must agree that a single person may not be able to mimic what a product does in short amount of time, but was just trying my luck

Product B is superior in other areas like CPU measurement like ZIIP and other things, so we tend to stick to it.

Regards,

expat · Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 2:24 pm

Here's what I have used in the past. Maybe it might be useful to you

vasanthz · Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 2:38 pm

Many Thanks Expat,
I would try it out.

Regards,

vasanthz · Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 4:48 pm

Hi,
The above solution did work and provided the fields from REC15 with the track used & many other details. Thanks Expat.

Rec15 had only limited information about non-vsams and still some parts of accounting were missing.
On searching more, there was a module on MXG called MXGDALO - DASD ALLOCATION MONITOR which hooks up with DADSM and it provides enough info of
a data set is allocated
a data set is extended
unused space in a data set is released
a data set is scratched
a data set is renamed.

Regards,

expat · Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2010 5:12 pm

I just knew about 15 years ago when I wrote that code that someday it would come in useful.

Thanks for letting us know the new status.

vasanthz · Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 10:33 am