There is no mechanism to flush trace buffers in storage to the trace writer data sets. So, in addition to having trace writer data sets available, a storage dump of the SMSVSAM address space and data space is required. If the problem being traced does not result in a dump the MVS DUMP command can be used to produce an SVCDUMP-type dump containing the trace buffer data. See z/OS MVS IPCS Commands for a complete description of this service.
It is possible with a sufficiently large trace table (8M recommended, use 16M if possible) that there is no data in the trace writer data sets.
CTRACE COMP(SYSSMS) FULL LOCAL