For either a coupling facility or a DASD-only log stream, system logger requires that you have SMS installed and active at your installation. This is true even if you do not use SMS to manage the DASD log data sets and staging data sets, because system logger uses SMS to allocate data sets, such as the DASD log stream and staging data sets.

If SMS is not active when you attempt to use a system logger application, system logger issues system messages that indicate allocation errors.

IBM® recommends that you use SMS to manage DASD data sets. Alternatively, you can establish a minimal SMS configuration to provide an environment for SMS, but no data sets become system-managed. See Set up the SMS environment for DASD data sets.