What's the deal with zEDC Express Accelerator messages during Connect:Direct for z/OS 5.2 startup? Do they mean I'm using (or not using) my zEDC card?

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Connect:Direct for z/OS 5.2 introduced a new feature for zEDC hardware compression. This allows you to perform hardware-based data compression if you have a zEDC Express Accelerator available on your system.

You may see one of the following messages at startup depending on the status of your zEDC card:

SITA375I 'zEDC Express Accelerator status is UNAVAILABLE'

If you see this, then you do not have a zEDC card available for use by Connect:Direct so run out and quickly buy one. This is a warning and can be safely ignored.

SITA374I 'zEDC Express Accelerator status is AVAILABLE'

This message is a bit trickier. It tells you that the zEDC card is available, BUT it doesn't indicate if you have actually configured Connect:Direct to use it.

By default ZEDC=NO is set in the Init Parms. Connect:Direct will operate as it always has (no zEDC is used). Note that if you have APAR/PTF PI74504/UI44765 installed the possible values are ZEDC = ON | OFF | PREFERRED. If you are behind on maintenance you only have ZEDC = ON | OFF for this option.

If you have ZEDC=YES or PREFERRED and want to verify that zEDC was used, check your statistics for the process in question.

The decision to use zEDC with Connect:Direct requires careful consideration beyond the scope of this discussion. As always Connect:Direct L2 support is here to help if you have questions.

Documentation can be found here:

What's New in This Release

Using zEDC with Sterling Connect:Direct

Global Initialization Parameters (look for ZEDC= and ZEDC.EXCLUDE=)