Advanced Topics › How You Influence Device Selection › Forcing a Job to Use a Reserved Device

Forcing a Job to Use a Reserved Device

You can use the FORCE parameter on the VARY JOB command to ensure that a job only allocates devices reserved for the job.

To set up the default option for the FORCE parameter, issue the SETOPTION TPCF JOBFORCE command. This command allows you to specify a default value if no value is specified for the VARY JOB command. You can specify YES, which forces the job to use only devices reserved for it, or NO, which serves to prefer these devices to the job, but does not limit the job to only these devices.

To limit the job PAYROLL to using only device 01A0, issue this command:

VARY 01A0 JOB=(PAYROLL,FORCE=YES)

Important! You should know the following about job reserve processing:

• Unless you are using the FORCE=YES parameter, a job may not allocate the reserved device. Using FORCE=NO lets jobs use devices not reserved for any jobs if a reserved device is unavailable.
• When using the FORCE parameter, be sure that the correct number of devices is reserved for the job. For example, if one job step in the specified job requires three tape devices allocated at one time, then three devices must be reserved for the job. If three devices are not reserved, then the job ends with the JCL error IEF700I.
• All types of processing are ignored if the job reserve processing, the TPCEDLXT exit routine processing, the OVG status (if SETOPTION TPCF OVGINELIG=JOBRESERV or YES) processing, or all three, eliminate all eligible devices for the current allocation. If this situation occurs, then TPCF restores all devices marked ineligible by TPCF back to eligibility.
• You should not reply WAIT,HOLD to the MIM2060 message when using job reserve. This results in message IEF700I, causing the job to abend with a JCL error.