How Do You Manage Your Tape Data with Tape Mount Management?

To use your tape media effectively and achieve optimum benefits from advancements in compaction and tape cartridges, you must write full cartridges of data automatically. To do so, you can use DFSMS to stack small data sets on a cartridge without dependencies on manual file markers or JCL changes.

Tape mount management recommends that you use DFSMShsm™ to do interval migration to SMS storage groups. You can use ACS routines to redirect your tape data sets to a tape mount management DASD buffer storage group. DFSMShsm scans this buffer on a regular basis and migrates the data sets to migration level 1 DASD or migration level 2 tape as soon as possible, based on the management class and storage group specifications.

By using SMS to direct data sets from tape to DASD, you do not have to change your JCL to modify the UNIT= parameter.

Managing tape data automatically with DFSMS implies that:

Random tape mounts are drastically reduced. DFSMS creates data in a primary pool buffer and puts it to tape at a later time using DFSMShsm. A later time can be minutes or days, depending on the management class assigned to the particular data set.
When a tape volume is mounted, it is filled with data. The system automatically determines the amount of data that can reside on a single volume based on the capability of both the installed hardware and the tape cartridge.
If an application accesses a data set later, DFSMShsm automatically recalls it from where it resides in the storage hierarchy and allocates it on primary DASD for access. No JCL changes are required, and the location of the data is transparent to the application program.