During allocation processing for a specific volume, if the VOLCAT is defined and connected to the system, the expectation during job processing is that the VOLCAT is online and accessible. If the volume on which the VOLCAT resides (general or specific) is offline (or the catalog is inaccessible for another reason), the job will terminate with a CBRXVOL failure. Being able to determine if the requested volume is in the VOLCAT (general or specific) is critical to the allocation path and ensuring that the correct tape device gets allocated. Prior to catalog APAR OA43490 there was an inconsistency in this behavior depending on whether it was the general or the specific VOLCAT that was offline. Now, with this APAR, regardless of whether it is the specific or the general VOLCAT volume that is offline, the job will terminate whereas before, the job would continue down the non-system-managed path, if the general VOLCAT volume was offline or general VOLCAT was corrupted or not available but still connected to the CATALOG address space. As appropriate, also refer to Disaster recovery site considerations for additional considerations during disaster recovery testing and the need to EXPORT DISCONNECT or DELETE the VOLCAT when there is no system-managed tape library.
