With DFSMShsm constantly working to ensure space and data availability, how can you keep track of what HSM has been doing and is running error-free? There are several places in which HSM traces and leaves its footprints for your storage administrators to review and analyze. Here are 3 useful documentation that you may want to review to ensure your HSM is running error-free.
1) Problem Determination Aid (PDA) – PDOX/PDOY data sets
It is always recommended that customers enable the PDA tracing. By default, this should already be enabled. The HSM PDA trace function is designed to facilitate first-failure data capture of problems that occur during HSM processing. The trace facility requires minimal system resources with negligible performance degradation to HSM.
How does it work? The PDOX data set is always the active or 'in use' data set. When it fills up, the PDOX data set will be renamed to PDOY, and the PDOY data set will be renamed to PDOX to continue writing. The SWAPLOG PDA command can be used to force a switch between the active PDOX data set and the inactive PDOY data set. The ARC0037I message is generated by HSM when the PDOX and PDOY data sets are swapped. Once a switch has occurred, you can run a job to copy the inactive PDOY data set into a GDG to retain PDA trace information for days, weeks, or months. See the below link for more information on the PDA setup.
These data sets contain information which allows IBM support to review what transpired in HSM code along with other error messages that may not surface in the logs. This can be pivotal when diagnosing an HSM problem.
2) FSR records (Function Statistics Record)
The function statistics record (FSR) is a control block that contains statistics for a particular function that is performed on one data set. Although these records do not surface any messages, they provide a history of activities that occurred within HSM. For example, this can be useful when reviewing/diagnosing an increase in certain activities.
If you specify the SETSYS SMF(nnn) parameter in your ARCCMDxx parmlib member, then HSM will collect SMF data. The FSR record type is this value +1. For example, if you specify SETSYS SMF(240), then the FSR records would be type 241.
Where can you use them? Well, the RMM report generator is a great place to start. HSM uses RMM's report generator tool in ISMF, and the Report Generator uses SMF and ICETOOL to create the reports. You don't have to have an RMM license to use this. For each of these reports, you can give it the SMF input file name and set up various parameters including dates, times, etc. to customize your reports. See the below link for more information on the report generator.
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos/3.1.0?topic=information-running-new-reports-report-generator
3) Activity Logs and Started Task Log
For specific areas of HSM to review, the activity log data sets are a great place to start as they provide messages that relate to a specific activity. The five areas are: space management, backup and recovery, dumps, ABARS, and command functions of DFSMShsm.
There are two sets of SETSYS commands you can use to customize the type of messages outputted and where they get outputted to.
1. The SETSYS ACTLOGMSGLVL and ABARSACTLOGMSGLVL control the amount and kind of generated messages for data sets processed by volume and level functions / ABARS.
2. The SETSYS ACTLOGTYPE and ABARSACTLOGTYPE control where messages are written to - either a SYSOUT data set or a DASD data set.
To review all HSM messages across the various functions, the HSM started task log is another great place to look into or for any errors (if any).
For any assistance reviewing the above documentation or for any questions or concerns, please contact IBM support.
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