Ron, You definitely want to go to logstreams. We went to CF logstreams 10 years ago and have never regretted it. And that is the first question you need to answer: coupling facility, which is sysplex-wide, or DASD-only? That will affect all your other decisions.
The next thing you need to do is see how much data you dump per day and in what records. That will help you determine what logstreams you want to use. Sadly, the picture IBM paints of keeping data in the logstream is not practical shops. Collecting over 100 gigabytes of data per day is not unusual; that does not lend itself to practical long term storage. You also need to determine how much disk space you are willing to give to offload datasets. While this is less of a concern for most shops than it was 10 years ago, it is still something you want to factor in. When we did our original calculations, we were comfortable keeping far less than a single day on disk. We period archive - archive, not dump - to tape, and consolidate at daily and weekly levels. You should save room for more offload datasets than you expect to handle the times the archive process breaks. On your question of return code 4 on the logstream dump, our archive jobs accept 4 as okay because of the message you cite. The archive process will fail, not merely RC=4, if it doesn't work. Again, test this for yourself; it will make you feel better and give you more confidence in your process. Best of luck! Jim Horne -----Original Message----- I'm trying to figure out the best-practice for collecting SMF data with Logstream instead of MAN datasets. There are few points I seem to miss and I hope to get some advice from those who used it for a while. I can see the benefits in storing the SMF on logstream only, for example I can use IFASMFDL to set range of dates and not have to worry about the location of each week/month in a different GDG generation. Also, the ability of logger to use the timestamp to read only relevant period can save time and CPU while offloading data in comparison to sequential read. Those benefit however are minified if I use the logstream only as a short-term storage before migrating the data to the regular GDG datasets. Here are some open questions I have: 1. The ideal situation for me would be to have all SMF data on logstream, for example for a period of two years, but there is a limit of 168 offload datasets before starting to use DSEXTENTs and each dataset can be up to about 2GB in size, this makes me wonder if I misunderstood the Logstream usage as a long term storage of smf data. Does it make sense to hold SMF data for few years on logstream? 2. Using the IFASMFDL utility is very tricky as I can get RC 4 for both "RELATIVEDATE RANGE EXTENDS INTO FUTURE" and for a case where I ran the job on a different system (DASD-only logstream) and it failed to find the logstream. Worse than that, if I try to dump data from few offload datasets (a week for example) and one of the "middle" datasets is missing I can get a return code of 0 while the data returned will be only what Logger was able to find. How can I be sure that the dumped data from IFASMFDL is complete? ________________________________ NOTICE: All information in and attached to the e-mails below may be proprietary, confidential, privileged and otherwise protected from improper or erroneous disclosure. If you are not the sender's intended recipient, you are not authorized to intercept, read, print, retain, copy, forward, or disseminate this message. If you have erroneously received this communication, please notify the sender immediately by phone (704-758-1000) or by e-mail and destroy all copies of this message electronic, paper, or otherwise. By transmitting documents via this email: Users, Customers, Suppliers and Vendors collectively acknowledge and agree the transmittal of information via email is voluntary, is offered as a convenience, and is not a secured method of communication; Not to transmit any payment information E.G. credit card, debit card, checking account, wire transfer information, passwords, or sensitive and personal information E.G. Driver's license, DOB, social security, or any other information the user wishes to remain confidential; To transmit only non-confidential information such as plans, pictures and drawings and to assume all risk and liability for and indemnify Lowe's from any claims, losses or damages that may arise from the transmittal of documents or including non-confidential information in the body of an email transmittal. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
