Understanding aggregate groups

An aggregate group is an SMS construct that uses control information and data set lists to define an application or other group. The data stored in the aggregate group is the principal input to DFSMShsm application backup and recovery.

An aggregate group consists of backup criteria and a group of data sets selected for backup by the storage administrator according to application or other requirements. See z/OS DFSMShsm Storage Administration for further information on backing up or recovering aggregate groups.

The aggregate group application allows you to:
Restriction: You cannot assign an object to an aggregate group.

ABACKUP allows specifying the number of copies of the Aggregate Backup and Recovery Support (ABARS) output files to be created using ISMF. The Copies value can be 1-15. The default is 1.

In order to support the creation of multiple copies, a unique name must be created for each copy. This entails using a new suffix convention for the output data sets: where
cc
Represents the copy number (a number from 1-15 of the copy created)
nnnn
Represents the version number
The name supports the elimination of the GDG support.