Reporting and Logging › Considerations for Defining the External Logger Log Stream

Considerations for Defining the External Logger Log Stream

When defining the External Logger Log Stream, consider the following points:

• A Log Stream can be defined to the System Logger as resident in the Coupling Facility or as DASDONLY.
  • When defined as resident in the Coupling Facility a single Log Stream can be defined for all the CA Tape Encryption subsystems.
  • When defined as DASDONLY each subsystem must have a different Log Stream name defined for it. For example, BES.sysid.subsys.LOG could be used.
• We recommend that DASDONLY Log Streams be defined for each subsystem. DASDONLY Log Streams do not require access to the Coupling Facility.
• The operating system will keep the data in LDS data sets for the period of time specified when the Log Stream is defined.
  • The LDS data sets are managed by the operating system.
  • A subsystem named LOGR is provided with the operating system to access and filter the data written to a Log Stream.
• To access the data in a Log Stream a DD is coded with a DSN parameter containing the Log Stream name and a SUBSYS parameter pointing to LOGR.
  • Any data selection criteria is also coded on the SUBSYS parameter.
  • Sample JCL to copy a subset of the Log Stream data to a sequential data set is provided as member BESLOGR in HLQ.CTAPJCL.

  Note: The actual LDS data set name used by the System Logger to store the Log Stream data is not used in the JCL. The Log Stream name defined to the System Logger is used instead.

• GENLOGR can be easily customized to select the previous day's Log Stream data and copy it to tape.

  By scheduling this job to run daily, Log Stream data can be kept for days, weeks, or months and used for historical reporting and troubleshooting.

• The IPCS utility is the reporting tool for both the internal and external logger.

  Note: For information about the IPCS utility, see the chapter “Troubleshooting.”