An aggregate group is a collection of related data sets and control information that have been pooled to meet a defined backup or recovery strategy. If a disaster occurs, you can use these backups at a remote or local site to recover critical applications.

You can use aggregate groups as a supplement to using management class for applications that are critical to your business. You can associate an aggregate group with a management class. The management class specifies backup attributes for the aggregate group, such as the copy technique for backing up DASD data sets on primary volumes, the number of aggregate versions to retain, and how long to retain versions. Aggregate groups simplify the control of backup and recovery of critical data sets and applications.

Although SMS must be used on the system where the backups are performed, you can recover aggregate groups to systems that are not using SMS. You can use aggregate groups to transfer applications to other data processing installations or migrate applications to newly-installed DASD volumes. You can transfer the application's migrated data, along with its active data, without recalling the migrated data.