Using automatic restart management

IBM® provides policy defaults for automatic restart management, as shown in Table 1. You can use these defaults or override them for your installation.

Automatic restarts do not need to be enabled at all times. For example, you might not want automatic restart management enabled for restarts unless certain jobs are running, or during off-shift hours. However, even while automatic restarts are disabled, elements can register with automatic restart management as long as the system is connected to an ARM couple data set.

To implement the policy, you need to:

Format an ARM couple data set and ensure that it is available to all systems in the sysplex that are to participate in automatic restart management. (That is, all systems running batch jobs or started tasks that might be restarted by automatic restart management and all systems on which batch jobs or started tasks might be restarted if the system on which they are running fails.)
Information on formatting and defining a couple data set is included in Considerations for function couple data sets.
Start the automatic restart management policy in the ARM couple data set. Once the policy is started, all systems connected to the ARM couple data set will use the same active policy.
To start automatic restart management with the policy defaults, issue:
```
SETXCF START,POLICY,TYPE=ARM
```
To start your own automatic restart management policy (mypol, for example), issue:
```
SETXCF START,POLICY,TYPE=ARM,POLNAME=mypol
```
Use the SETXCF STOP command to disable automatic restarts.
For information on updating the automatic restart management policy dynamically, see Updating policies in a sysplex.