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FDRARC is a high-performance data archival tool that can be used to control the consumption of your z/OS disk storage.
With FDRARC, unwanted and expired data sets can be quickly and efficiently migrated to a less
expensive medium, such as a high-capacity tape, a VTS, or to a compressed format on another disk.
Migrated data sets are recorded in a control file and recataloged to a volser of MIGRAT.
FDRARC's auto-recall facility ensures that a migrated data set can be easily and
transparently recalled to disk if it is referenced by a batch job, online application,
or an end-user.
- FDRARC is incredibly easy to use and set up.
- It can be installed and operational in less than an hour.
- When operating in a DFSMS environment, it can
utilize the “space management” criteria set in the DFSMS
Management Class for each data set on each volume processed.
- FDRARC can be used on a single volume, a pool of volumes, or your
entire DASD subsystem.
- Thresholds can be established on volumes so that FDRARC
space management can be invoked to maintain a certain level
of free space within the DASD storage pool.
- FDRARC can also be used in non-DFSMS environments,
such as development or testing systems, where user data
often goes unused for long periods of time.
FDRARC includes a report utility called FDRQUERY, which can be used to illustrate
the effects of a data migration policy against one or more disk volumes using a
range of “not-referenced” criteria.
In the example below, we are looking at all volumes belonging to the DFSMS Storage
Group called ‘DEV’. The details for one volume (DEV002) are shown,
together with the Summary report for all 6 volumes in the Storage Group.
SUMMARY LEVEL BY VOLUME SERIAL NUMBER
ALLOC BEFORE AFTER LAST USED SAVINGS IF MIGRATED
VOLSER DEVTYPE TRACKS %ALLOC %ALLOC DAYS DATE DSMS TRACKS %SAVED
------ ------- ------ ------ ------ ---- ---- ---- ------ ------
DEV002 3390-3 43665 80.18% 20.00% 30 2005220 786 33643 77.04%
27.67% 60 2005190 712 29802 68.25%
31.33% 90 2005160 685 27971 64.05%
27.67% 120 2005130 643 25635 58.70%
SUMMARY LEVEL BY DEVICE TYPE
ALLOC BEFORE AFTER LAST USED SAVINGS IF MIGRATED
VOLCNT DEVTYPE TRACKS %ALLOC %ALLOC DAYS DATE DSMS TRACKS %SAVED
------ ------- ------ ------ ------ ---- ---- ---- ------ ------
6 3390-3 224911 74.84% 34.92% 30 2005220 1148 119971 53.34%
36.32% 60 2005190 1070 115762 51.47%
37.12% 90 2005160 1037 113340 50.39%
37.92% 120 2005130 994 110944 49.32%
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The report shows that DEV002 is currently 80% allocated. If FDRARC was run
against the volume to remove all data sets not referenced in the previous
30 days, the allocation would come down to 20%. 786 data sets would be
removed from the volume (33,643 tracks), saving 77% of the allocated space.
If a less severe criterion were used for the migration, the savings
would not be as high. The report shows the results of using
‘not-referenced-in’ criteria of 30, 60, 90 and 120 days.
The Summary report shows that, across all six 3390-3 volumes in the
DEV Storage Group, the current allocation level is 74%. With 30-day
migration criterion, this would be reduced to 34%, with over 1,100
data sets (nearly 120,000) tracks being reclaimed.
By removing unwanted data sets from disk, FDRARC will naturally create areas of
free space on a volume, and for best performance, these freespace areas should ideally be consolidated.
See the FASTCPK
section for a quick and easy solution for consolidating free space on a volume into
as few as one or two contiguous areas.
Although the price per megabyte of z/OS disk storage has dropped considerably over the
past few years, the demand has increased in most installations. For this reason, disk
storage remains a significant part of the Data Center budget.
The available DASD space at an installation, however cheap, needs to
be used as efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, DASD volumes often
contain datasets that no longer need to be on disk.
In many cases, datasets are created by a batch job or TSO user and
never used again. Other datasets are used only on an infrequent
basis—perhaps just once a year—and do not need to be on disk in the
interim period. In addition, there are also the datasets that do not
meet installation standards (e.g. uncataloged/expired) which need to
be regularly dealt with.
FDRARC provides an excellent way to control the consumption of DASD
resources by ensuring that expired or unwanted datasets are either
deleted or moved to a less expensive medium (e.g. tape or compressed DASD).
For more introductory information on FDRARC, see the Product Portfolio Sheet
For more technical detail on FDRARC, see the Tech Detail section.
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