IBM® provides the couple data set format utility to allocate and format the DASD couple data sets for your sysplex. See Planning the couple data sets for couple data set considerations before proceeding with couple data set formatting. In particular, note the recommendations about not over-specifying the size or the parameter values in a policy, which could cause degraded performance in a sysplex.

The control statements for the utility programs follow standard conventions for JCL statements. The utility program accepts 80-byte records that can contain one or more parameters per record. Columns 72 through 80 of the record image are not used. See z/OS MVS JCL Reference for additional information about JCL statements.

Use the XCF couple data set format utility to create and format all sysplex couple data sets prior to IPLing a system that is to use the sysplex couple data sets. Other types of couple data sets do not have to be formatted prior to IPLing the system. The format utility is portable; this is, you can run the utility on an OS/390® or z/OS® system.