DASD Management

Overview
This course presents the concepts needed to develop and maintain a series of strategies and procedures to manage an OS/390 storage subsystem.

Practicals are used throughout the course to help consolidate the topics covered.

Course objectives
On completion of this course, the attendee will have had a thorough grounding in all aspects of DASD storage management, enabling him/her to set up and manage an OS/390 DASD subsystem.

By the end of this course you will have learned
How data is stored and retrieved in an OS/390 system; how to configure and manage the peripheral configuration so as to avoid conflict and how to make balanced use of the available storage.

Who should attend
OS/390 System Programmers, Storage Administrators and Operations Support personnel. The course may also prove useful to Hardware Planners.

Pre-requisites
A basic knowledge of OS/390 and familiarity with TSO/ISPF.

Course synopsis

• Hardware and software components
  Both the hardware and software components of an installation are covered with particular emphasis on the DASD subsystem, its usability, control, capacity and performance
• Volume preparation
  Volume initialisation; VTOC and indexed VTOC sizing, creation and placement; catalog and WDS sizing, creation and placement
• Data set organisation and processing
  Data set formats are covered together with blocksizes; data set OPEN/CLOSE and data set processing
• Allocation and serialisation
  Device and volume selection and control; data set allocation
• Centralised storage management
  The role of DFSMS in managing DASD
• Data availability, space and performance
  SIM processing and ICKDSF recovery functions; resolving space problems, fragmentation, and the role of DFHSM, DFDSS; the use of ISMF; catalog CACHE and VLF; 3390 dual copy, DFW, concurrent copy and data striping