Dynamically running CICS VR scavengers

In most environments, the frequency used by CICS® VR to automatically run the various CICS VR scavengers effectively clean up unused resources and help prevent out-of-storage conditions. However, a few scenarios might occur where it would be advantageous to dynamically run one or more CICS VR scavengers.

Some of the possible scenarios that might require dynamic execution of a CICS VR scavenger include:

SCENARIO 1: out-of-storage condition: If your batch jobs that start CICS VR VSAM batch logging experience out-of-storage conditions, you might want to dynamically run the server scavenger to release all unused resources in both the CICS VR server address space and the client address space.
SCENARIO 2: CICS VR error: If the CICS VR server address space encounters an error, you might want to dynamically run the history scavenger to flush all messages to the data set allocated to the DWWMSG ddname. You can then view the latest messages written to the data set allocated to the DWWMSG ddname to help resolve the error.
SCENARIO 3: Updated automatic deregistration criteria: If you change the value a CICS VR automatic deregistration setting, you might want to dynamically run the inventory scavenger to deregister, and optionally delete, items that are older than newly specified CICS VR automatic deregistration criteria.

To dynamically run a CICS VR scavenger, you must issue the appropriate SETSMS CICSVR_GENERAL_CONTROL(string) operator command to dynamically start the appropriate CICS VR scavenger. See Defining a CICS VR general control parameter, for more information.

You can set both the time interval parameter and the start time parameter to control the scavenger using the panel interface.