VTAM® owns and controls all affinities that are not controlled by a generic resource application. In all cases, VTAM owns and controls this affinity before an application is notified that a session is being established. For example, if an LU 6.1 session fails prior to the application program being notified of that session, VTAM, as owner, terminates the affinity between the LU and the application program.

After the last session between the LU and an application of the generic resource ends, VTAM terminates the affinity between the LU and the application.

In a sysplex that supports multinode persistent sessions, affinities are maintained for a generic resource application that has enabled persistence, even after the VTAM (or operating system) that owns the application fails. This is true as long as the application remains in recovery pending state, which typically is the duration of the persistent sessions timer (PSTIMER). The application's partner LUs still maintain their affinities with the application, even though that application is not available for new sessions and is not processing any existing session traffic.