Repeated OPS3441O POSSIBLE PROCESS BLOCK DEPLETION messages

Products

• OPS/MVS Event Management & Automation

Issue/Introduction

Message is occurring four times daily, consistently, around the same time of day.  OPS/MVS is active on the LPAR but is not yet actively managing work.  All 300+ resources are in PASSIVE mode and none of the time-of-day schedules are currently enabled.  We are about to start actively managing all resources and using the time-of-day schedules. 

Is this message indicating a problem?

 

Environment

OPS/MVS, All releases

Resolution

* For the situation where the message OPS3441O POSSIBLE PROCESS BLOCK DEPLETION, CODE= E (0 2356 0 )  occurs on a repeated cadence each day:  

The OPS3441O and HealthChecker warning messages are both associated to this running out of process blocks condition - although we only observed the high evaluations condition for the OPS3441O message. We recommend to 'stagger' any automation that can cause this - ie. drain 30 initiators at a time in place of ALL the initiators, consolidate MSG* rule processing, etc. Some customers may instead opt to just increase the number of PROCESS blocks for immediate relief; however, it is strongly encouraged that the processes that drove the Process Block depletion still be investigated.    

* For repeated OPS3441O POSSIBLE PROCESS BLOCK DEPLETION, CODE=B and CODE=E messages where the PROCESSUSE, PROCESSHIGHCOUNT do not look high:  

The ProcessHighCount indicates the high amount usage; however, pay attention to the value of what the ProcessASIDMax is.  In this instance it was set to 15, so any one asid that uses 15 processblocks is subject to losing automation.  Check to verify if the application/s that issues the messages reached this value (asidmax).   The OPS3441O messages are indications that possible process block shortage conditions may be occurring, and further investigation should be done.  In one case, investigation revealed that at least 4 process blocks were to be used for each WTO issued, one for each MSG * rule, and the customer had multiple MSG* rules issued at the same time.  The recommendation was to review the need for MSG * rules and consolidate ONLY needed code into one MSG * rule.  In other words, code efficiently with early out conditions and SELECT/WHEN/OTHERWISE.  Minimal temporary relief can be achieved by increasing Process blocks.

Additional Information

If using OPS/MVS release 13.5, the PTF SO13481 may be the fix if the  PROCESSUSE parameter shows values around  2147483643. Visit the OPSVIEW panel 4.1.1 to check the value of this parameter.