We use VTAM for our MSF connections between LPARS. We find that when we IPL, there are usually 2 of our 5 LPARS that don't connect to each others successfully with MSF. We end up bouncing MSF on one of those LPARS and then all recovers.
A DEACTIVATE/ACTIVATE of the LPARS in MSF doesn't seem to recover it.
The recommendation is to delay the MSFINIT execution until VTAM completes initialization because we could see the following message in the log, which indicated that VTAM completed initialization after the first attempt was made to allocate the APPL.
01:10:47 OPS3520O ACB OPEN FAILED FOR VTAM APPL applname, RC=8, ERROR=92
01:11:14 IST020I VTAM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE FOR CSV2R3
The ERROR=92 indicates VTAM was not active as seen in the time stamps.
Another recommendation is to create a message rule to intercept the message IST020I and then initialize MSF. In other words, execute the MSF START and ACTIVATE MSFID(ALL) from a rule that intercepts the IST020I VTAM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE message.