Directing ABARS files to DASD

It is possible to code SMS ACS routines that direct ABARS files to DASD. If this is done, and the files get migrated to DASD, an HSM DELETE is issued to remove them during roll-off processing. If that delete fails, the file may remain cataloged with no ABR record pointing to it. If this happens, the data set must be manually deleted.

Because ABARS is designed to write to tape, space parameters are not passed. When directing ABARS files to DASD, the space parameters must be obtained using the SPACE parameter of the ALLOCxx PARMLIB member. You can verify these parameters by issuing: 
D ALLOC,OPTIONS

Note that changing these parameters may affect any other allocations using the defaults.

By defining DATACLAS and using the PRIMARY, SECONDARY, and AVGREC fields, you can specify how many records will be contained in primary and secondary storage. Your specification can be done in kilobytes (K), megabytes (M), or bytes (U).

In addition, you need to define and assign a management class for ABARS files that will be allocated to DASD using the NOLIMIT operand for the following fields:
  • EXPIRE NON-USAGE
  • EXPIRE DATE/DAYS
  • RET LIMIT

This will ensure that the aggregate backups are not prematurely expired or deleted. The retention period is controlled by the management class specified in the aggregate definition. You may wish to omit the backup attribute, depending on your requirement. If not omitted, DFSMShsm will take incremental backups of the ABARS files that are allocated to DASD. Note that there may be two separate management classes, one that applies only to the ABACKUP output files, and one that defines how to manage the aggregate group as a whole.

When creating an ABARS aggregate to be directed to DASD, use the NOSTACK parameter. Otherwise, it will fail and you will receive message ARC6055I and a return code of 94. You can either specify NOSTACK on the ABACKUP command, or you can use the SETSYS command to specify NOSTACK for all aggregate backups, as follows: 
SETSYS ABARSTAPES(NOSTACK)