Processing in a shared environment

During offline and online processing, the commands BUILDIX, INIT, INSPECT, INSTALL, REVAL, and REFORMAT issue the RESERVE macro to obtain control of the device. After processing on the device finishes, the DEQ macro is issued to release the device.

This procedure prevents other processors from accessing the volume, but does not guarantee exclusive access to the volume from the same processor.

When processing online, it is always possible that a particular track will be concurrently updated. The following actions minimize this impact:

BUILDIX or REFORMAT commands require additional serialization when issued on systems sharing the same volume. This additional serialization increases processing time by up to seven seconds per volume. If the volume is not being shared by other systems, or the volume has been varied offline to all other systems, then the serialization is not needed and may be bypassed by using the JCL parameter PARM=NOSYSZ on your EXEC statement. For example:
 //stepname EXEC PGM=ICKDSF,PARM=NOSYSZ
Note: After any ICKDSF command modifies the volume label, the VTOC, or the VTOC index, issue a MOUNT command from the processors that share the volume.