Using ERO and Tape Storage Groups to Reduce SARPAC Consolidation Runs

Products

• View

Issue/Introduction

• Do you have hundreds of little used tapes because most reports have expired?
• Do you have hundreds of different ERO tape retention values?
• Do you have sensitive data that should be retained off-site?

 

Environment

• View®
• OM View for z
• Output Management View® for z/OS

Resolution

You can address all these concerns with your ERO table and tape storage groups.

SARPAC is a utility that will consolidate active reports from many tapes onto new tapes but, like any process, requires resources to perform its assigned task.

Through the use of general tape retention values and tape storage groups, you can eliminate the need to run the consolidation utility. Generally, report retention can be grouped in a smaller number of fixed values. Rather than have tape retentions of 10 days, 15 days, 30 days, etc., you can create general categories such as; 90 day, 180 day, 1 year, 5 year, and/or 10 year tape retention groups. You can then create tape storage groups which will hold all reports for a given retention period.

Example - current ERO Table:

/ACCT01*   DRETPD=10   RETPD=30
/ACCT02*   DRETPD=15   RETPD=45
/ACCT03*   DRETPD=15   RETPD=60

can be replaced with:

/ACCT01*   DRETPD=10   RETPD=90 STORGRP=RETPD90
/ACCT*     DRETPD=15   RETPD=90 STORGRP=RETPD90

and a View initialization parameter of:

STORGRP0=//5/CART,/,
STORGRP1=RETPD90//1/CART,/,

Since every report on the 'RETPD90' storage group tape will expire at the same time, which also means the tape can be scratched at this time; we have eliminated the need to consolidate these tapes.

Sensitive data can also be duplicated without duplicating all data, by adding the second tape unit parameter to the RETPD90 storage group; we can dynamically create a duplex tape of the sensitive data and, if required, move this tape off-site. Since both the primary and duplex tapes will expire at the same time, the duplex tapes can be returned to the data center knowing that every report on that tape has also expired.

STORGRP0=//5/CART,/,
STORGRP1=RETPD90//1/CART,CART/,

STORGRP and the ERO table can also be used to group application data together. All of the accounting reports are grouped on one set of tapes, while the payroll reports are grouped on another. This allows duplication of data for use by one application and avoids duplication where it is not needed.

Example - current ERO table:

/ACCT*   DRETPD=10   RETPD=30
/PAYR*   DRETPD=15   RETPD=45

can be replaced with:

/ACCT*   DRETPD=10   RETPD=30 STORGRP=ACCT
/PAYR*   DRETPD=15   RETPD=45 STORGRP=PAYR

and a View initialization parameter of:

STORGRP0=//5/CART,/,
STORGRP1=ACCT//5/CART,/,
STORGRP2=PAYR//1/CART,CART/,

The use of the ERO table and the initialization parameters can assist in maximizing tape use while responding to the various needs of data and application sensitivity.