IBM VTS and AUTOPICK must be off for each scratch pool.

Products

• Mainframe VM Product Manager
• VM:Manager Suite for Linux on Mainframe
• VM:Manager Suite for z/VM
• VM SUITE
• VM:Tape for z/VM

Issue/Introduction

We recently implemented an IBM VTS and noticed that when scratch ran, what should be SCRATCH1 tapes have been set as SCRATCH0 which is the default in the DGTVCNTL DATA.

Resolution

The default SCRATCH category is being used because autopick is enabled for your scratch pools.
By default, VM:Tape enables autopick on for scratch pools. So, even though you do not have an AUTOPICK record defined in the VMTAPE CONFIG file, autopick is on for your scratch pools.
AUTOPICK must be off for each scratch pool.

Because the AUTOPICK Facility is off (because there is no AUTOPICK config record enabled), we cannot issue AUTOPICK QUERY|START|STOP commands.

So, you will need to define an AUTOPICK record in the VMTAPE CONFIG file.
We recommend trying AUTOPICK NONE CANCEL.

After defining AUTOPICK, initialize VM:Tape, and issue AUTOPICK QUERY.
Hopefully, you will see AUTOPICK is STOPPED messages for the scratch pools.
If not, issue AUTOPICK START.