Products Overview

STORAGE is one of the fastest-growing items in most installations’ budgets, yet a large percentage of this critical resource is often wasted. Inadequate standards enforcement, poor JCL practices, and system limitations often result in misdirected data and underutilized resources. THE STORAGE CONTROL CENTER family of products is an integrated suite of storage management programs that allows you to get the most out of your storage dollars. The Storage Control Center products improve disk space utilization, prevent storage-related errors, allow installations to monitor the storage subsystem in real time, and proactively control the use of storage space.

Storage Resource Management
Allocation Control Center Monarch The Allocation Control Center Monarch (ACC Monarch) is a systems software product that allows your installation to control DASD and TAPE resources. The product is also integrated with DFSMS, and provides tracing facilities for the DFSMS ACS routines.
Space Recovery System The Space Recovery System (SRS) dynamically recovers disk space allocation failures. When SRS intercepts a space failure, the installation rules are used to determine the recovery options. If the rules allow recovery, SRS forces the operating system to get the required disk space, and the job runs to completion. No more X37 Abends!
SMS/Debug SMS/Debug is a real-time debugging tool for IBM DFSMS. Trace facilities are available for the production ACS rules routines, the DFSMS volume selection routines, and the DADSM pre, and post, processing exits.

 

 
 DTS Clone Center (DCC) A feature-rich tape migration and device management utility that makes converting to new tape technologies simple and straightforward. DCC works with all types of tape technologies, including the IBM TS7700 series, the Dell/EMC DLm, the Optica zVT, and others. And DCC can now migrate tapes at the volume level, retaining the original volume serial number, making migration much faster and minimizing tape metadata updates. Volume cloning is flexible and multitasked, allowing large scale migration to take place concurrently with production work. Both scratch and data volumes can be cloned, minimizing the need for additional scratch pools. DCC reporting facilities can generate volume selection lists and DCC maintains activity logs and provides reports to show migration progress. Dataset-level tape copying can also be performed.
zVT Control Center (ZCC) ZCC is designed to work with Optica zVT Virtual Tape Libraries. The product eases installation, manages and monitors a zVT node through the channel interface via an operator console, TSO/ISPF or a Batch job. The product can also control OS device allocation without using an SMS Manual Tape Library (MTL) and perform load balancing between zVT nodes. Migration tools and tape management scratch exits are also provided.
COBOL Migration Manager (CMM) CMM offers a new approach to mainframe application modernization by providing data-driven insights to help prioritize COBOL migration, saving countless hours of manual work. CMM preserves valuable recompiling resources by giving users a snapshot of what programs are in production.

 

Storage Automation
SCC DLimit SCC DLimit tracks disk storage utilization at the application level, preventing runaway space use and automatically notifying storage administrators when specified limits are exceeded.
SCC MONitor SCC MONitor can examine Storage Groups, VTOCs, Catalogs, HFS, DFSMS, HSM control files and logs, Tape Libraries, JCL libraries, and storage management DADSM events. When the Monitor rules encounter specified conditions, the product can log, notify, or automatically take installation defined actions. SCC MONitor includes the following components: MON-Snapshot, MON-RTM, MON-HSM, MON-ISPF, MON-Explorer and MON-iPhone. MON-Snapshot is the core component of SCC MONitor, and can be executed in batch or run as a started task. Installations typically run multiple instances of MON-Snapshot – batch jobs for scheduled storage management snapshots and started tasks to handle transaction requests from MON-ISPF, MON-Explorer GUI, or MON-iPhone application. MON-RTM is used to monitor real-time storage management events using the DADSM POST processing exit and capture HSM events. This component can also be used to send storage event records to a MySQL database. The MON-Explorer application can use the database for storage analysis and trends evaluation.
MON-Explorer MON-Explorer is a PC-based client that communicates through DIF to work with SCC MONitor, issue z/OS Console and TSO commands, and run system utilities and third party software products. The application can display information in a variety of formats, reports, and graphs. The Mon-Explorer can also perform storage management and installation-defined actions on the host. An optional database tier can also be added to collect storage management events for historical analysis and capacity planning.

 

System Automation
EASY/Exit EASY/Exit allows installations to take advantage of the ‘hidden’ functionality available in z/OS and DFSMShsm without the need for complex, hard-to-maintain assembler language exit routines. The simple IF-THEN-ELSE logic of the Storage Control Center rules language provides an easy-to-use way to implement useful, even critical, system features that would be difficult or impossible for most installations to provide otherwise. Unlike hand-coded exit routines, EASY/Exit rules can be dynamically modified, and come with extensive debugging and error recovery features.
Simulate 2000 SIMULATE 2000 supports simulation of multiple clocks on one machine. Specifying alternate dates is fast and easy: through an ISPF interface, directly within JCL, or through online screens in CICS or IMS/DC. Online users can control dates by Region, Terminal, User or Transaction. Batch programs are controlled by Job Name, Step Name, Program Name, Job Class, User ID, etc. Alternate dates can be specified for either the job or individual steps.
JCL-QA JCL-QA is a program product designed to scan individual JCL job streams, entire JCL libraries, or job streams extracted from job scheduling systems. The product can be used to enforce installation standards, or perform a system validation test. The system validation tests can be performed on either the local system or remote systems that are also running JCL-QA.
Predictive Recall (MON-PRECALL) Predictive Recall (MON-PRECALL) minimizes production delays caused by recalls of migrated data. Migrated production datasets will be recalled prior to their actual use, resulting in an overall shorter batch window. The product uses the information from the Job Scheduler to create a list of production datasets that will be accessed in the next production cycle and determines if any of those datasets have been migrated. HRECALL commands are generated and passed directly to the Inactive Data Mover. To avoid any impact on the production workload, the Predictive Recall job can be scheduled to run when the system is under-utilized, prior to the production cycle.