A coupling facility might need to be removed from a sysplex for maintenance, to have a new level of coupling facility control code installed, or to be replaced. When such a situation occurs, you must remove any structures contained in the coupling facility before it is shut down and removed from the sysplex.

See Sample procedure for coupling facility maintenance for steps to take in preparation for removing a coupling facility from a sysplex, such as putting the coupling facility in maintenance mode, and moving all the structures out of the coupling facility. By placing a coupling facility into maintenance mode, the XCF allocation algorithm will eliminate the it from the list of coupling facilities that are eligible for structure allocation. Once the coupling facility is in maintenance mode, the REALLOCATE process can be used to remove structures from it.

See Coupling Facility Guidelines for procedures for shutting down a coupling facility.