Using the problem determination aid to trace DFSMShsm processing

To help you gather information about DFSMShsm processing, DFSMShsm provides the problem determination aid (PDA). This aid can be used for both primary and secondary address spaces. It gathers diagnostic information at specific internal module points, records the data in a wraparound table in storage, and writes the data to data sets on DASD. You use the diagnostic information to provide data to your service representative should a problem develop with DFSMShsm. The purpose of the PDA is to gather sufficient information during DFSMShsm execution to enable subsequent analysis to pinpoint module flow and resource usage related to any given problem.

Note: If the DFSMShsm PDOX data set is on a non-SMS volume that will be backed up, use the ALTERDS datasetname VERSIONS(0) command to prevent DFSMShsm from backing it up.

If the PDOX data set is on an SMS volume that will be backed up, assign it to an SMS management class that does not allow backup copies.