Another way to restrict access to the catalog is to suspend a catalog. Similar to locking a catalog, you can only suspend user catalogs. You cannot suspend a master catalog. While the catalog is suspended, unauthorized requests to access the catalog will be suspended automatically in the user’s address space waiting on SYSZIGG4 BCS ENQ. Because the requests are suspended, they will not return back to the user with any return code. The catalog is also unavailable to any system that shares the catalog. After you have completed the catalog recovery or maintenance, resume the catalog so that normal operations can continue.

To suspend or resume a catalog with a serialized close across the sysplex, use the SUSPEND and RESUME parameters of the access method services ALTER, DEFINE, or IMPORT commands. The ALTER command is used to suspend or resume an existing catalog; the DEFINE command is used to suspend or resume a newly defined catalog; and the IMPORT command to suspend or resume a catalog during a restore. In order to suspend or resume a catalog, you must have READ access to the IGG.CATLOCK profile in RACF®, and ALTER authority to the catalog. If the catalog is shared between systems, you may want to ensure you provide access to those users who may need to access the catalog while it is suspended.

F CATALOG,RECOVER,SUSPEND(ucatname*) 
F CATALOG,RECOVER,RESUME(ucatname*)

If the catalog is shared between systems, it may be resumed from any of the shared systems. Thus the catalog does not need to be resumed from the system that suspended it. This provides an alternative way to recover when the system that suspended the catalog cannot be used to resume it.