Before you convert a volume to SMS management, you should reduce the amount of activity to the volume being converted. The CONVERTV command with the SMS keyword automatically places the volume in a state of reduced activity before doing the actual conversion. You might, however, want to reduce activity without doing the actual conversion (for example, if you want to simulate conversion). Do this by specifying the PREPARE keyword on the CONVERTV command.

Specifying PREPARE prevents data sets from extending and new allocations from being made on the volume. However, users can still access the data on the volume from either the SMS system or a system sharing the volume.

When you use PREPARE, a report is generated that tells you the volumes that have been placed in the INITIAL state. If any of the volumes are ineligible to be placed in the INITIAL state, the report also lists them and the reason they were ineligible (for example, they did not have an indexed VTOC or were offline).

If you use the TEST keyword with PREPARE, you still get the report indicating which volumes would and would not be placed in the INITIAL state, but the PREPARE is not actually performed. You can then take some action to make those volumes eligible or simply not run PREPARE against those volumes.

The CONVERTV command with the NONSMS keyword reverses the effect of PREPARE and takes a volume out of the INITIAL state.