Re: How to share tape drives
Les, I was referring to the ptf VM63746 Thanks Alain That is the DFSMS/VM RMS APAR that allows for MULTIUSER attach support. This will allow you to use request an RMS operation without having the device detached from another user ID. For example, you can request a library mount for a user ID and not have it detached from that ID to satisfy the mount. Best Regards, Les Geer IBM z/VM and Linux Development
Re: How to share tape drives
On 3/13/07, Les Geer (607-429-3580) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I was referring to the ptf VM63746 That is the DFSMS/VM RMS APAR that allows for MULTIUSER attach support. This will allow you to use request an RMS operation without having the device detached from another user ID. For example, you can request a library mount for a user ID and not have it detached from that ID to satisfy the mount. Very nice! That will make life a whole lot easier! -- Mark Pace Mainline Information Systems
Re: How to share tape drives
Alain, The control block hints that Alan provided are only relevant when running z/OS under z/VM. The information does not apply when running z/OS in a separate LPAR from the z/VM system. JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alain Benveniste Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 12:02 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: How to share tape drives Alan, I was looking that direction too. Since I a not a hard Control Block game= r it was bit empiric for me. I thougt to test the RDEVSID today with no conviction. Now that you help me this way I have something more concrete to look at. This would work in both cases when we are working : - in LPAR mode (21 partitions) - in D/R when our 14 MVS are under VM Is this info was missing to JR and you ? Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
You're right JR, I tested this, this morning and I can't get any info. You also probably means there is no way to obtain the info I need... But that generates an other question : What Control Blocks dfsmsrm uses to send back the info we can see with the cmd : dfsmsrm q lib dev (assign Alain Alain, The control block hints that Alan provided are only relevant when running z/OS under z/VM. The information does not apply when running z/OS in a separate LPAR from the z/VM system. JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alain Benveniste Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 12:02 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: How to share tape drives Alan, I was looking that direction too. Since I a not a hard Control Block game= r it was bit empiric for me. I thougt to test the RDEVSID today with no conviction. Now that you help me this way I have something more concrete to look at. This would work in both cases when we are working : - in LPAR mode (21 partitions) - in D/R when our 14 MVS are under VM Is this info was missing to JR and you ? Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
You're right JR, I tested this, this morning and I can't get any info. You also probably means there is no way to obtain the info I need... But that generates an other question : What Control Blocks dfsmsrm uses to send back the info we can see with the cmd : dfsmsrm q lib dev (assign Do you mean control blocks within RMS or CP? RMS issue's I/O to the ATL to obtain information displayed in messages returned in response to the Q LIB command. Best Regards, Les Geer IBM z/VM and Linux Development
Re: How to share tape drives
Les, Does RMS would be able to know which tape drive is online on a MVS LPAR ? The fact is when a tape is mounted on MVS I know enough, with this cmd, which host has the drive but not when it is sleeping; just online but not working. Regards Alain You're right JR, I tested this, this morning and I can't get any info. You also probably means there is no way to obtain the info I need... But that generates an other question : What Control Blocks dfsmsrm uses to send back the info we can see with the cmd : dfsmsrm q lib dev (assign Do you mean control blocks within RMS or CP? RMS issue's I/O to the ATL to obtain information displayed in messages returned in response to the Q LIB command. Best Regards, Les Geer IBM z/VM and Linux Development
Re: How to share tape drives
Alain, Be careful! DFSMSRM QUERY LIB DEV requires an ATTACH/DETACH of the device by the RMSMASTR virtual machine. I'm not sure if that will be disruptive to a z/OS LPAR that might be using the tape drive (perhaps Les can confirm if this is an issue). JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alain Benveniste Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 09:44 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: How to share tape drives You're right JR, I tested this, this morning and I can't get any info. You also probably means there is no way to obtain the info I need... But that generates an other question : What Control Blocks dfsmsrm uses to send back the info we can see with the cmd : dfsmsrm q lib dev (assign Alain Alain, The control block hints that Alan provided are only relevant when running z/OS under z/VM. The information does not apply when running z/OS in a separate LPAR from the z/VM system. JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alain Benveniste Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 12:02 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: How to share tape drives Alan, I was looking that direction too. Since I a not a hard Control Block game= r it was bit empiric for me. I thougt to test the RDEVSID today with no conviction. Now that you help me this way I have something more concrete to look at. This would work in both cases when we are working : - in LPAR mode (21 partitions) - in D/R when our 14 MVS are under VM Is this info was missing to JR and you ? Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
Jr, I did the some tests and I didn't canceled anything on my MVS lpar. Was I lucky ? It is better to wait for Les answer. If it was a problem, couldn't the new ptf brought by z/VM530, that permits dfsmsrm to att multiuser, resolve this ? Alain Alain, Be careful! DFSMSRM QUERY LIB DEV requires an ATTACH/DETACH of the device by the RMSMASTR virtual machine. I'm not sure if that will be disruptive to a z/OS LPAR that might be using the tape drive (perhaps Les can confirm if this is an issue). JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alain Benveniste Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 09:44 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: How to share tape drives You're right JR, I tested this, this morning and I can't get any info. You also probably means there is no way to obtain the info I need... But that generates an other question : What Control Blocks dfsmsrm uses to send back the info we can see with the cmd : dfsmsrm q lib dev (assign Alain Alain, The control block hints that Alan provided are only relevant when running z/OS under z/VM. The information does not apply when running z/OS in a separate LPAR from the z/VM system. JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alain Benveniste Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 12:02 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: How to share tape drives Alan, I was looking that direction too. Since I a not a hard Control Block game= r it was bit empiric for me. I thougt to test the RDEVSID today with no conviction. Now that you help me this way I have something more concrete to look at. This would work in both cases when we are working : - in LPAR mode (21 partitions) - in D/R when our 14 MVS are under VM Is this info was missing to JR and you ? Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
As far as I know, there wasn't any new CP APAR for multiuser support. Attaching multiuser will only help in the VM environment, not across LPARS. If there was an assign issue, CP would not allow RMS to attach the drive. Although, once APAR VM64062 to DFSMS (RMS) comes out, with a corresponding CP APAR, RMS will no longer attach the drive to itself to issue a query command. I do not believe RMS has any access to determine any assign status of the device. Unless the ATL returns information on this which RMS is currently not looking at. RMS does not look at CP RDEV control blocks. Best Regards, Les Geer IBM z/VM and Linux Development Jr, I did the some tests and I didn't canceled anything on my MVS lpar. Was I lucky ? It is better to wait for Les answer. If it was a problem, couldn't the new ptf brought by z/VM530, that permits dfsmsrm to att multiuser, resolve this ? Alain Alain, Be careful! DFSMSRM QUERY LIB DEV requires an ATTACH/DETACH of the device by the RMSMASTR virtual machine. I'm not sure if that will be disruptive to a z/OS LPAR that might be using the tape drive (perhaps Les can confirm if this is an issue). JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alain Benveniste Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 09:44 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: How to share tape drives You're right JR, I tested this, this morning and I can't get any info. You also probably means there is no way to obtain the info I need... But that generates an other question : What Control Blocks dfsmsrm uses to send back the info we can see with the cmd : dfsmsrm q lib dev (assign Alain Alain, The control block hints that Alan provided are only relevant when running z/OS under z/VM. The information does not apply when running z/OS in a separate LPAR from the z/VM system. JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alain Benveniste Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 12:02 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: How to share tape drives Alan, I was looking that direction too. Since I a not a hard Control Block game= r it was bit empiric for me. I thougt to test the RDEVSID today with no conviction. Now that you help me this way I have something more concrete to look at. This would work in both cases when we are working : - in LPAR mode (21 partitions) - in D/R when our 14 MVS are under VM Is this info was missing to JR and you ? Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
Les, I was referring to the ptf VM63746 Thanks Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
Jr, Finally, your are the one for who these threads will bring a benefit. :) Thanks for all Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
On Sunday, 03/11/2007 at 05:12 EST, Alain Benveniste [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I agree that the best would be to buy a product but my client is deaf on this kind of purpose. Alain, in my opinion it will cost you a lot of time and effort to research, build and support (!) your own solution and *should* be outside the scope of your contract with your client. Your client is comparing the cost of a commercial product against free. Explain that there is no free. He can pay you or another consultant to build a custom solution, pay more for onging support, or he can pay for a commercial solution. Or even buy more tape drives and ATLs. If you do choose to build your own, don't forget that you must also figure out how to forcibly recover a tape drive that has been ASSIGNed to another system, but that system has died or become non-responsive. To answer your question about Diagnose 0xD0, CP does not perform I/O to the tape drive - he just copies information the guest provides into the RDEV control block. He will happily set the volser in the RDEV even if it is not the real volser that is mounted or if there is no tape loaded at all. I think it is there just for EREP records and some messages. Maybe QUERY rdev too. Alan Altmark z/VM Development IBM Endicott
Re: How to share tape drives
The context: I learnt few time ago that my client wanted to migrate VM applications to Unix. 1 problem was the price to do the work : 5 years of VM maintenance. My idea is that he is in a situation were he would like to see VM doing works really important to not stop using it. Ex : A main task like MVS un der a VM in a disaster/recovery config. The next main task is to restore our complete environment with VM. I think he wants to see what VM is capable to do to maintain it./ At this time I just want to compare the tool we have to share tapes with how VM could do the same work. I didn't mentionned an important thing. I am n ot thinking to developp what CA-MIM or other products do but just trace the products we have to use them all together to do the work better than the actual tool (a real effort to maintain it since I'm not the author). I thought to use AutoOperator (TOM), a product which trappes MVS messages , able to vary on/off drives or to converse with VM. At this time I just ta ke pleasure how I would do it if it was my job to write this tool :) Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
Alain, It does sound like you have a single point of control that most shops do not have ... -- a single LPAR -- a single z/VM -- all z/OS machines running as guests under the z/VM This makes the situation far less complicated. However, I think in this case, ATTACH MULTIUSER will defeat you rather than help you out. JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alain Benveniste Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2007 10:04 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: How to share tape drives The context: I learnt few time ago that my client wanted to migrate VM applications to= Unix. 1 problem was the price to do the work : 5 years of VM maintenance.= My idea is that he is in a situation were he would like to see VM doing works really important to not stop using it. Ex : A main task like MVS un= der a VM in a disaster/recovery config. The next main task is to restore our= complete environment with VM. I think he wants to see what VM is capable = to do to maintain it./ At this time I just want to compare the tool we have to share tapes with = how VM could do the same work. I didn't mentionned an important thing. I am n= ot thinking to developp what CA-MIM or other products do but just trace the products we have to use them all together to do the work better than the actual tool (a real effort to maintain it since I'm not the author). I thought to use AutoOperator (TOM), a product which trappes MVS messages= , able to vary on/off drives or to converse with VM. At this time I just ta= ke pleasure how I would do it if it was my job to write this tool :) Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
Jr, We have 21 LPARs in production, 14 under VM in D/R. Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
On 3/11/07, Alain Benveniste [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We have 21 LPARs in production, 14 under VM in D/R. So how do your 21 LPARs in production deal with the tape drives. You don't have a dedicated set for each LPAR, I suppose? Wouldn't you just want to imitate that during a disaster recovery situation? Rob
Re: How to share tape drives
Rob, You're right : no tape drives are dedicated into production, idem in D/R. All tape drives are elligible to be acceded by any parttion. Alain
Re: How to share tape drives
On Sunday, 03/11/2007 at 09:03 EST, Alain Benveniste [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At this time I just want to compare the tool we have to share tapes with how VM could do the same work. I didn't mentionned an important thing. I am not thinking to developp what CA-MIM or other products do but just trace the products we have to use them all together to do the work better than the actual tool (a real effort to maintain it since I'm not the author). I thought to use AutoOperator (TOM), a product which trappes MVS messages, able to vary on/off drives or to converse with VM. At this time I just take pleasure how I would do it if it was my job to write this tool :) Oh. :-) If it helps you, the RDEVSTAP field in the Real Device Block (RDEV) for a multiuser tape points to the Shared Tape Block (STPBK). The STPASIGN field in the STPBK points to the Virutal Device Block (VDEV) that holds the assign. Once you have the VDEV in your hand, you know the user and virtual device that owns the tape at the moment. (It would sure be nice if QUERY TAPE ATTACHED showed that when it comes across a MULTIUSER tape.) The above information may help you avoid having to actually trace, looking for ASSIGNs. Alan Altmark z/VM Development IBM Endicott
Re: How to share tape drives
Yes ... But if he has 21 LPARs running z/OS ... how would that help? Just a thought ... maybe I'm missing something? JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alan Altmark Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2007 07:22 PM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: How to share tape drives On Sunday, 03/11/2007 at 09:03 EST, Alain Benveniste [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At this time I just want to compare the tool we have to share tapes with how VM could do the same work. I didn't mentionned an important thing. I am not thinking to developp what CA-MIM or other products do but just trace the products we have to use them all together to do the work better than the actual tool (a real effort to maintain it since I'm not the author). I thought to use AutoOperator (TOM), a product which trappes MVS messages, able to vary on/off drives or to converse with VM. At this time I just take pleasure how I would do it if it was my job to write this tool :) Oh. :-) If it helps you, the RDEVSTAP field in the Real Device Block (RDEV) for a multiuser tape points to the Shared Tape Block (STPBK). The STPASIGN field in the STPBK points to the Virutal Device Block (VDEV) that holds the assign. Once you have the VDEV in your hand, you know the user and virtual device that owns the tape at the moment. (It would sure be nice if QUERY TAPE ATTACHED showed that when it comes across a MULTIUSER tape.) The above information may help you avoid having to actually trace, looking for ASSIGNs. Alan Altmark z/VM Development IBM Endicott
Re: How to share tape drives
On Sunday, 03/11/2007 at 07:56 AST, Imler, Steven J [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But if he has 21 LPARs running z/OS ... how would that help? Just a thought ... maybe I'm missing something? Maybe I misunderstood, too, but I thought Alain (is that a great name, or what?) was looking at a future of z/OS guests. If he runs copies of his LPARs as guests he can see what they are doing w.r.t. shared tapes. Alan Altmark z/VM Development IBM Endicott
Re: How to share tape drives
Alain, I'm not trying to be a salesperson ... but as far as I know, CA's MIM is the best solution for the environment you describe. The AUTOPATH feature of CA MIM (together with CA's VM:Tape which I know you run) will handle seamless drive sharing between/among your various z/OS and z/VM systems moving drives where they need to be to satisfy pending mount and allocation requests. This solution requires running CA MIM on both z/OS and z/VM ... JR (Steven) Imler CA Senior Software Engineer Tel: +1 703 708 3479 Fax: +1 703 708 3267 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alain Benveniste Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2007 03:28 PM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: How to share tape drives I read a similar discussion on the mailing list about assign. We don't have any tools to share tapes between 1 VM 20 MVS. Something has been developped in the past which is not really up-to-date.= We remarked it needs too much CPU to do its work. I project to use our VM to be THE platform to share tape drives between lpars in a normal prod or when we do our disaster recovery tests (MVS are= lvl2). We only have ATL robots. I just tested one thing that could give other id= eas to investigate. I have attached a drive with the multiuser option. In parallel it was use= d by a MVS. Then I tested the dfsmsrm q dev xxx (assign cmd and I was surprised to get the volser that was mounted in MVS. If dfsmsrm is able t= o send back this info, can't it be able to send back the part number or the= MVS partname too ? That could be great. And (What VM diag D0 would say if a tape is mounted in a MVS ?) Alain Benveniste
Re: How to share tape drives
Alain, At the risk of misinterpreting what you're asking, I have to caution you that because you CAN share tape drives between MVS systems with the multiuser option, it doesn't mean you SHOULD (at least, using native facilities). HELP for the CP ATTACH MULTIUSER option says The MULTIUSER function is intended for guest operating systems that manage their own assignment of tape drives. MVS does not, by default, manage its own tape drive assignments. There may be others but the only facilities I'm aware of capable of tape sharing are CA's Multi-Image Manager (as described by CA's own Steve Imler) and MVS' native Automatic Tape Switching (via either IEFAUTOS or ATS STAR features) and I'm not sure if that works in a MVS-under-VM environment (and it certainly doesn't work with a CMS workload included). Failure to use one of these factilities (or some other equivalent which I'm not aware of, including home-grown facilities) in conjunction with MULTIUSER could result in ASSIGN errors (IOS000I ..ASN, as I recall) or possibly (I doubt MVS will allow this to happen but ...) data corruption. Be careful. Dennis Schaffer Mutual of Omaha The IBM z/VM Operating System IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU wrote on 03/10/2007 02:28:21 PM: I read a similar discussion on the mailing list about assign. We don't have any tools to share tapes between 1 VM 20 MVS. Something has been developped in the past which is not really up-to-date. We remarked it needs too much CPU to do its work. I project to use our VM to be THE platform to share tape drives between lpars in a normal prod or when we do our disaster recovery tests (MVS are lvl2). We only have ATL robots. I just tested one thing that could give other ideas to investigate. I have attached a drive with the multiuser option. In parallel it was used by a MVS. Then I tested the dfsmsrm q dev xxx (assign cmd and I was surprised to get the volser that was mounted in MVS. If dfsmsrm is able to send back this info, can't it be able to send back the part number or the MVS partname too ? That could be great. And (What VM diag D0 would say if a tape is mounted in a MVS ?) Alain Benveniste This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and are solely for the use of the addressee. It may contain material that is legally privileged, proprietary or subject to copyright belonging to Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company and its affiliates, and it may be subject to protection under federal or state law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any use of this material is strictly prohibited. If you received this transmission in error, please contact the sender immediately by replying to this e-mail and delete the material from your system. Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company may archive e-mails, which may be accessed by authorized persons and may be produced to other parties, including public authorities, in compliance with applicable laws.
