When to use administrative mode

Some administrative tasks require that the volumes of a server be temporarily disabled. Restarting a CICS® server in administrative mode temporarily disables its volumes. When restarted in administrative mode, a server:

• Exports only its administration remote procedure call (RPC) interface; it does not export any of its other RPC interfaces. For example, a Structured File Server (SFS) restarted in administrative mode does not export the SFS client interface but exports only the interface needed by the tkadmin program.
• Does not perform recovery on its volumes, as it would if started in normal operations mode with enabled volumes.

The following tasks can be done only when a server is in administrative mode:

• Recovering from media failure: log or data volumes have been damaged and you need to restore the volumes. Note that administrative mode is not necessary to recover from damage to mirrors.
• Renaming logical and physical volumes: the tkadmin rename lvol and tkadmin rename pvol commands.
• Relocating physical volumes: the tkadmin move pvol command.
• Reclaiming storage space occupied by a logical volume: the tkadmin delete lvol, tkadmin delete pvol, and tkadmin delete disk commands.
• Performing any other operation that requires a volume to be offline.

The commands for renaming and relocating volumes are covered in Renaming volumes. The procedure for reclaiming storage space is covered in Reclaiming storage space. The procedure for restoring data and log volumes is covered in Recovering from server failures.

To perform administrative-mode tasks, you must first restart a server in administrative mode and then use the appropriate tkadmin commands to administer the server.