Vital record specifications are retention and movement policies for volumes with retention method VRSEL and the data sets on these volumes that are not excluded from VRSEL processing. Define vital record specifications to use DFSMSrmm retention and movement management. The only requirement is that you define them before running your first expiration processing, which you should run once a day.

To define vital record specifications, use the RMM ADDVRS subcommand or the DFSMSrmm ISPF dialog. For more information about ADDVRS and the dialog, see z/OS DFSMSrmm Managing and Using Removable Media. See Managing volumes with special dates for information about defining vital record specifications that use special expiration dates for volumes using the EDG_EXIT100 installation exit.

To implement the retention and movement policies you define, you must run DFSMSrmm inventory management vital record processing as described in Running vital record processing. You can control the way vital record processing runs using the DFSMSrmm parmlib member EDGRMMxx OPTION command as described in Using the parmlib member EDGRMMxx.