In February We Launched ACC Monarch: Here’s How Our Customers Are Leveraging The 3 Most Common Uses

Jun 15, 2021

It’s been four months since we released our latest version of Allocation Control Center or ACC, and with that release came a new name, “ACC Monarch.” At its core, ACC Monarch is about preventing the incorrect use of storage resources that are needed in order for your critical applications to function as intended. It ensures resources like production dataset names, production log streams and production volumes get used on the production system while test resources remain relegated to the testing systems. It can also impose restrictions on resource usage on certain dates or at specific times.

Click image to download the whitepaper

We all know an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but in situations where resources are allocated incorrectly because of overlooked policy management, ACC Monarch can automate control of DEFINE, OPEN, ALTER, or DELETE, examine and override users’ JCL or IDCAMS control statements. It can also set detailed attributes for SMS and non-SMS datasets, and provide tracing, SMF recording, logging, and extensive debugging capabilities to provide vital dataset audit trails.

ACC Monarch’s is flexible enough to let users perform a wide variety of useful tasks, but it most importantly ups your storage allocation policy game in a systematic approach.

  1. Enforce Policies and Standards
    Standards are implicit in the rules that you define using ACC, and they can be enforced for jobs, datasets, or even individual devices. For example, we could say a job or a step or a dataset can or can’t use a specific device at a particular time, offering granular control over your computing resources. ACC enables you to alter attributes through a dataset’s lifecycle at creation time, when the dataset is OPENed, and when it’s DELETEd.
  1. Avoid JCL Changes
    The control ACC allows is particularly useful in avoiding the sorts of mass JCL changes that might be required when standards change, a migration is necessary from an old program or from disk or tape units, or when you’re implementing new technologies such as EAV or virtual tape. Mass JCL changes are dreaded because they’re virtually guaranteed to introduce problems, but ACC can accomplish the same effect just by implementing a rule.
  1. Analyze and Prepare for Changes
    Policy rules can accomplish many things, but they’re commonly used to help users prepare for upcoming changes. ACC can issue messages that warn users about these updates, create SMF records, and assess the kind of impact that changes will have — before they’ve been put into place. With ACC Monarch, changes have never been easier or smoother.

ACC Monarch was DTS Software’s first product, and it continues to be one of our most widely deployed. For more in-depth information about ACC Monarch and a walkthrough of customer-specific use cases, download a recording of our Avoiding Downtime with ACC/SRS and Standards Enforcement webinar or view all of our resources on-demand at https://www.dtssoftware.com/resources/. Think ACC Monarch could be the right product for your needs? Request a demo today.