Collecting SMF Records

The system management facilities (SMF) create records of MVS system and job-related information for your installation.

To run the volume mount analyzer, you must provide SMF records for your system. When collecting SMF records, you must:

Use SMF records from a currently supported release of z/OS.
Use the IFASMFDP dump utility to collect the records.
Collect the correct record types and sub-types. See Understanding the Input to GFTAXTR for the required types and sub-types
Collect the data that you want to analyze together. Once GFTAXTR has created the output file, you cannot sub-divide or merge the output with other GFTAXTR output files
Be aware of shared systems considerations. See Understanding the Limitations of the Volume Mount Analyzer for more information.

For best results, you should:

Collect SMF records for a period of at least one month, including month-end processing.
End the collection sample just before midnight so that you have a full day of records for the last day.

See z/OS MVS System Management Facilities (SMF) for details on SMF records and how to collect them.