General Information for AUTO-ARCHIVE

The AUTO-ARCHIVE subparameter allows you to decide whether to archive SYSDATA, which is defined in SYSDATA. While archiving SYSDATA is normally desirable, it might not be desirable for cyclic jobs, started tasks, or frequently repeated jobs that do not require restart.

If archiving, the SYSDB subparameter allows you to decide whether SYSDATA for different jobs must be archived to a common data set (Y) or whether to use a separate data set for each run (N). If Y is entered, a single archived SYSDATA data set is used for archiving until it is full. Then, another SYSDATA data set is allocated and used. This is the recommended method.

Creating a separate data set for each run is not recommended because:

• Creating many data sets consumes a large amount of space in the disk VTOC.
• Each data set is allocated on a track basis. If the SYSDATA does not completely fill the track, large amounts of disk space may be wasted.

The MAXDAYS and MAXRUNS subparameters define retention criteria for the archived SYSDATA of jobs that ended NOTOK. Defaults are defined in the Control-M/Restart installation parameters. You can specify either or both parameters to override the defaults. If both parameters are specified, retention is limited by the condition that is fulfilled first.

When archiving SYSDATA, BMC recommends that you do not enter the value 99 in the MAXWAIT parameter for cyclic jobs or started tasks. Otherwise, these jobs, which are never automatically deleted from the Active Jobs file, may cause the disk to fill up with unnecessary archived SYSDATA. The MAXWAIT parameter is described in MAXWAIT: Basic Scheduling Parameter.

Note: Specified parameters take effect only during execution of the New Day procedure (CONTDAY) or the CTMCAJF utility. Therefore, it is possible to find more generations of the same job than the current value of MAXRUNS.

AUTO-ARCHIVE and the History File

SYSDATA is archived in the History Jobs file, as defined by the values set for the MAXDAYS and MAXRUNS parameters, and under the following conditions:

As long as a job exists either in the AJF or in the History Jobs file, the action of the MAXDAYS and MAXRUNS parameters applies to the job's SYSDATA, except for the last archived SYSDATA, which will be retained regardless of the setting of the MAXDAYS and MAXRUNS parameters. On the other hand, if the HIST parameter in the CTMPARM member in the IOA PARM library is set to N (No) and a job is deleted from the AJF, the job's SYSDATA is deleted regardless of the values set for the MAXDAYS and MAXRUNS parameters. For more information, see information about maintaining previous runs in the History Jobs file in the Control-M/Restart User Guide.