Media Balancing Across Systems

This function gives you the ability to balance a number of scratch volumes owned by each system in the BRMS network. With the scratch volumes balanced, a restricted state save will be less likely to run out of scratch media, and the system will not need to remotely ask other systems for more media. It is recommended that you run this when there is no other BRMS activity going on.

To balance your scratch media follow these steps:

  1. List your systems in order of highest priority to lowest priority.
    Table 2. Example: List of systems and their hierarchy.
    System Priority Media Required
    PROD1 1 5
    PROD2 2 3
    PROD3 3 4
    DEV01 4 2
    DEV02 5 2
  2. Once you have established your hierarchy of systems, you must issue the following command to set the above priority:

    STRBALBRM ACTION(*SET) MEDCLS(media-class) LOC(location) SYSNAME(system-name) MEDPTY(number) MEDREQ(number)

    The following are brief descriptions of the parameters you need to specify:

    ACTION(*SET)
    Sets the media requirement as specified by the other parameters
    MEDCLS(media-class)
    Specifies the media class for the media balancing.
    LOC(location)
    Specifies the media storage location of the media for balancing.
    SYSNAME(system-name)
    Specifies the name of the system whose media will be used for balancing.
    MEDPTY(number)
    Specify the priority number to assign this system (SYSNAME) while balancing media.
    MEDREQ(number)
    Specify the number of media required for this system (SYSNAME).

    Using the above list as an example you would issue the command five times, once for each system.

    STRBALBRM ACTION(*SET) MEDCLS(FMT3590H) LOC(TAPMLB01) SYSNAME(PROD1) MEDPTY(1) MEDREQ(5)
STRBALBRM ACTION(*SET) MEDCLS(FMT3590H) LOC(TAPMLB01) SYSNAME(PROD2) MEDPTY(2) MEDREQ(2)
STRBALBRM ACTION(*SET) MEDCLS(FMT3590H) LOC(TAPMLB01) SYSNAME(PROD3) MEDPTY(3) MEDREQ(3)
STRBALBRM ACTION(*SET) MEDCLS(FMT3590H) LOC(TAPMLB01) SYSNAME(DEV01) MEDPTY(4) MEDREQ(2)
STRBALBRM ACTION(*SET) MEDCLS(FMT3590H) LOC(TAPMLB01) SYSNAME(DEV02) MEDPTY(5) MEDREQ(2)

    This will set the required volumes and the priority of each system. BRMS will then use these two values in deciding how to balance the pool of scratch media. The priority of the system determines who gets media first. If there isn't enough media to meet all the requirements, then the systems prioritized last will most likely not meet its required media specification, depending on how much total media is needed. To know how much media is needed, you can evaluate past backups, and gauge the amount of media that was used.

  3. Produce and evaluate the Media Balance report to ensure that your systems are setup correctly. To do so run the following command: STRBALBRM ACTION(*REPORT) MEDCLS(media-class) LOC(location)

    Using the same example sample from above, we would issue STRBALBRM ACTION(*REPORT) MEDCLS(FMT3590H)LOC(TAPMLB01). The report would then appear like the following:

                                                            Display Spooled File                                    
 File  . . . . . :   QP1AMBL                                                                              Page/L
 Control . . . . .                                                                                        Column
 Find  . . . . . .                                                                                              
 *...+....1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+....5....+....6....+....7....+....8....+....9....+....0....+....1.
  5770BR1 V6R1M0 080215            Media Balancing Report                                       6/29/07  13:56:1
  Selection Criteria                                                                                            
    Media Class  . . . . . . . . . . : FMT3590H                                                                                    
    Location . . . . . . . . . . . . : TAPMLB01                                                                                    
    System . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *NETGRP                                                                                     
                                                        Number of  Number of                                                       
  System     Network    Media                 Media     Media      Media                                                           
  Name       ID         Class      Location   Priority  Required   Available  Status                                               
  PROD1      APPN       FMT3590H   TAPMLB01      1          5          3      Communicating                                        
  PROD2      APPN       FMT3590H   TAPMLB01      2          3          3      Communicating                                        
  PROD3      APPN       FMT3590H   TAPMLB01      3          4          3      Communicating                                        
  DEV01      APPN       FMT3590H   TAPMLB01      4          2          4      Communicating                                        
  DEV02      APPN       FMT3590H   TAPMLB01      5          2          3      Communicating 
                         * * * * *   E N D   O F   L I S T I N G   * * * * *
  4. From the report, if the actual amount of media is not greater to or equal to the required amount, then you will need balance your media. To balance your media, you need to run the following command:STRBALBRM ACTION(*BALANCE) MEDCLS(media-class) LOC(location)

    For this example, we would issue STRBALBRM ACTION(*BALANCE) MEDCLS(FMT3590H) LOC(TAPMLB01)

    Notes:
    1. It is best to run media balancing after your movement, to ensure that media that have expired off site are potentially back on site and at the location you are balancing.
    2. You will only need to balance media once for the entire network group.
  5. Produce the media balance report, to ensure that the balancing succeeded. Repeat Step 3.

    In this example, the report appears to show that the balancing was successful.

                                                            Display Spooled File                                                       
 File  . . . . . :   QP1AMBL                                                                              Page/L
 Control . . . . .                                                                                        Column
 Find  . . . . . .                                                                                              
 *...+....1....+....2....+....3....+....4....+....5....+....6....+....7....+....8....+....9....+....0....+....1.
  5770BR1 V6R1M0 080215            Media Balancing Report                                       6/29/07  13:56:1
  Selection Criteria                                                                                                               
    Media Class  . . . . . . . . . . : FMT3590H                                                                                    
    Location . . . . . . . . . . . . : TAPMLB01                                                                                    
    System . . . . . . . . . . . . . : *NETGRP                                                                                     
                                                        Number of  Number of                                                       
  System     Network    Media                 Media     Media      Media                                                           
  Name       ID         Class      Location   Priority  Required   Available  Status                                               
  PROD1      APPN       FMT3590H   TAPMLB01      1          5          5      Communicating                                        
  PROD2      APPN       FMT3590H   TAPMLB01      2          3          3      Communicating                                        
  PROD3      APPN       FMT3590H   TAPMLB01      3          4          4      Communicating                                        
  DEV01      APPN       FMT3590H   TAPMLB01      4          2          2      Communicating                                        
  DEV02      APPN       FMT3590H   TAPMLB01      5          2          2      Communicating 
                         * * * * *   E N D   O F   L I S T I N G   * * * * *

To remove a system from the list of systems, simply run the following command:

STRBALBRM ACTION(*REMOVE) MEDCLS(media-class) LOC(location) SYSNAME(system-name)

For this example, we would issue: STRBALBRM ACTION(*REMOVE) MEDCLS(FMT3590H) LOC(TAPMLB01) SYSNAME(DEV01)


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