3. USAGE GUIDELINES › 3.1 Setting Up VCC for Operation › 3.1.4 Scheduling Considerations with CA MICS and DFHSM

3.1.4 Scheduling Considerations with CA MICS and DFHSM

VCC is designed to be run once a day to take a snapshot of
the DASD configuration.  This snapshot, in the form of SMF
records, is then fed into the CA MICS Space Analyzer Option
and Accounting and Chargeback products during the CA MICS
daily run.

VCC can be run at any time of the day, but it must be run
before the CA MICS daily run. It should not be run during
daily backup and restore processing because this type of
processing slows the VCC run significantly.

To ensure that VCC is run at least once a day, we advise
that you do one of the following:

    o  Have VCC started automatically through the JES2
       automatic command facility at the selected time.

    o  Have operations run VCC as part of their daily
       schedule or use a production control package.

Either approach suggests it may be worthwhile to set up VCC
as a started task (STC) by creating a PROC in a PROCLIB
data set so the JCL can be invoked with an operator START
command.  Use of symbolic parameters and a scheduling package
will enable you to present VCC with a different set of run
time parameters in the VCCPARMS data set according to the
variables such as:

    o   day of week (for example, CATCHECK=Y only on Sun.)

    o   primary MVS image vs. secondary images (shared DASD)
        (primary MVS scans all online DASD while secondary
        MVS images scan with a concatenated VCCPARMS data set
        containing EXCLUDEVOL lists)

VCC must not be run in a JES3 jobclass that has JOURNALING
specified.  A system 130 abend will result because of a
conflict in device ownership.

If you have DFHSM implemented and add HSM=Y to collect
information on migrated data sets and/or backup versions, you
should ensure that VCC runs and completes either just BEFORE
or just AFTER DFHSM Daily Space Management is run.  Because
VCC is so fast, it is probably better to run VCC before HSM
daily processing.  That way, VCC has finished data
collection; then CA MICS DAILY processing and DFHSM daily
processing can proceed in parallel to each other.  The
important point regarding the VCC-DFHSM interface is
consistency.  The statistics developed in the DFHSM files in
the CA MICS database will be more useful if the inventory
view of DFHSM-managed storage is always taken at the same
time relative to the data management actions performed by the
DFHSM daily (for example, MIGRATE, DELETE, BACKUP, etc.).

Information on two examples of uses of the VCCPARMS keywords
are in the following subsections:

    1 - Hourly Collection of Volume Data (DATAINFO)
    2 - Weekly Collection of Catalog Status (CATCHECK)