SMS In an Hour? The 60-Minute Storage Administrator

One of the most important and yet often neglected parts of any computing environment is the storage system. The size, complexity, and performance needs of modern storage environments make it almost impossible to manage today’s large amounts of disk and tape storage resource manually. In z/OS systems, DFSMS is the component of the system that provides this automation – the Storage Management System (thus, SMS).

Introduced in 1989, DFSMS has grown into one of the largest and most critical components of z/OS. Despite its long history and immense range and complexity – almost every disk and tape volume in the system is managed by SMS – the DFSMS Storage Management Subsystem is so remarkably well-designed and deliberately simple that it’s possible for almost any programmer to understand and use it.

This month, we’ll talk about the most important components of DFSMS, especially the control structures, configuration datasets, and interfaces that make DFSMS work. At the end of an hour, you might not be a storage administration expert, but perhaps you can sound like one!