To prepare for and implement a storage management policy, you perform these steps:

1. Prepare for SMS, as described in Preparing for the Storage Management Subsystem. This includes:
   1. Allocating control data sets, which contains information used by SMS.
   2. Modifying and creating SYS1.PARMLIB members to identify SMS to all the systems in the SMS complex. These new members take effect when you IPL.
   3. Establishing access to the ISMF Primary Option Menu for Storage Administrators, which is shown in Figure 1. This is the final preparation step.
2. Define the base configuration, which identifies the systems within the SMS complex. See Creating the base configuration.
3. Define the SMS classes and storage groups that you want SMS to assign to your data sets and objects, and the data sets that you want to assign to your aggregate groups. See Defining storage groups, Defining management classes, Defining storage classes, Defining storage classes, Defining aggregate groups and Defining aggregate groups. Define optical libraries and drives and tape libraries, if you have them. See z/OS DFSMS OAM Planning, Installation, and Storage Administration Guide for Object Support and z/OS DFSMS OAM Planning, Installation, and Storage Administration Guide for Tape Libraries.
4. Define ACS routines to assign the SMS classes and storage groups. Then test the routines. See Defining ACS routines.
5. Validate the ACS routines individually to check for errors. You should then validate the entire SMS configuration to check for errors that exist among its related parts.
6. Activate the valid SMS configuration. See Activating Storage Management Subsystem configurations.