Installation and Configuration Best Practices › Configuration for Optimal Performance › Implement the Automatic Pointer Errors Correction Subtask

Implement the Automatic Pointer Errors Correction Subtask

Use the Automatic Pointers Error Correction (APEC) subtask of the Common Tape System (CTS).

Business Value:

The APEC subtask continually verifies the integrity of the TMC in real time to prevent any possible chaining problems from impacting your tape activity. Any errors found in the TMC are immediately corrected.

Additional Considerations:

CA 1 multi-volume and multi-data set chaining errors and errors in the free chain of unused DSNBs occur as a result of invalid manual updates. However, any of the following conditions may also cause invalid chains:

• System failure during CA 1 processing
• TMC restore failure without having all available Audit data (as in a disaster recovery)

The APEC subtask is designed to replace the TMSPTRS utility, which scans for pointer errors and generates reports and control statements that can be used to fix the TMC. The APEC subtask provides the following benefits:

• APEC identifies additional problems and corrects pointers errors directly in the TMC.
• APEC can also be run in a NOUPDATE mode. Running in a NOUPDATE mode causes APEC to report the errors found and to generate control statements for the TMSUPDTE, TMSUDSNB, and TMSAGGR utilities.
• In addition to the errors identified by TMSPTRS, APEC also verifies that all of the DSNBs on the free chain are truly free.

Note: For more information about the APEC subtask of CTS, see the Administrator and Operators Guide.