Connection failure to a coupling facility cache structure

If connection to a coupling facility cache structure is lost, DFSMS™ attempts to rebuild the cache in a structure to which all the SMSVSAM servers have connectivity. If the rebuild is successful, the failure is transparent to CICS®.

If DFSMS is unable to recover transparently from a connectivity failure to a coupling facility cache structure, CICS issues message DFHFC0163 (followed by DFHFC0158) on detecting the condition. The recovery process from this failure is the same as for a cache structure failure:
  • Errors are returned to CICS when it attempts to access data sets bound to the cache, as a result of which:
    • CICS attempts to back out the unit of work, fails, and shunts the unit of work so that backout can be retried later.
    • CICS converts any locks held by the unit of work against records in the data set to retained locks.
    • CICS is informed by the quiesce protocols when the connectivity is restored.
    • CICS retries backout of the shunted units of work.