ABCs of z/OS System Programming Volume 3 - IBM Redbooks

Chapter 5. System-managed storage
5
As your business expands, so does your need for storage to hold your applications and data,
and so does the cost of managing that storage. Storage cost includes more than the price of
the hardware, with the highest cost being the people needed to perform storage management
tasks.
If your business requires transaction systems, the batch window can also be a high cost.
Additionally, you must pay for staff to install, monitor, and operate your storage hardware
devices, for electrical power to keep each piece of storage hardware cool and running, and for
floor space to house the hardware. Removable media, such as optical and tape storage, cost
less per gigabyte (GB) than online storage, but they require additional time and resources to
locate, retrieve, and mount.
To allow your business to grow efficiently and profitably, you need to find ways to control the
growth of your information systems and use your current storage more effectively.
With these goals in mind, in this chapter we present:
► A description of the z/OS storage-managed environment
► An explanation of the benefits of using a system-managed environment
► An overview of how SMS manages a storage environment based on installation policies
► A description of how to set up a minimal SMS configuration and activate a DFSMS
subsystem
► A description of how to manage data using a minimal SMS configuration
► A description of how to use Interactive Storage Management Facility (ISMF), an interface
for defining and maintaining storage management policies
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