Use vital record specifications to define retention and movement policies for volumes managed by the VRSEL retention method and the data sets on those volumes that are not excluded from VRSEL. See Defining vital record specifications for information about defining data set vital record specifications and volume vital record specifications. DFSMSrmm supports all the retention types described in Types of retention. See Defining retention policies for data sets and volumes and Defining movement policies for volumes for more information. See the z/OS DFSMSrmm Implementation and Customization Guide for information about DFSMSrmm support for stacked volumes.

DFSMSrmm identifies the volumes to be retained or moved. DFSMSrmm marks the volume movement as pending during storage location management processing.

You must confirm that the volume movement has been completed before DFSMSrmm can process the next move in the policy. You must make sure all pending volume moves, whether they are processed automatically or manually, are confirmed to DFSMSrmm. When volumes are entered into an automated tape library, DFSMSrmm automatically confirms the move for the volumes. You can confirm movement for volumes one at a time or perform global confirmation where all pending volume moves are confirmed at the same time. See Global Confirmation for examples of using the RMM CHANGEVOLUME subcommand to perform global confirmation.

DFSMSrmm creates a detailed report of data sets and volumes that are retained, the vital record specification used, and the location where the data set or volume is retained. See the z/OS DFSMSrmm Implementation and Customization Guide for more information about running DFSMSrmm inventory management. See the z/OS DFSMSrmm Reporting document for information about creating inventory management reports. DFSMSrmm keeps the latest retention information for each data set in the control data set. Use the RMM LISTDATASET subcommand described in LISTDATASET: Displaying information about a data set to request retention information.