Vaulting By Boxes

In addition to handling volumes on an individual basis, Vault Management can handle "boxes" of volumes. Volumes are gathered into boxes, and boxes are moved to different locations.

Boxes can only be moved to the locations specified for the volumes they contain. Therefore, all volumes in a box must have the same vault pattern. The vault pattern must contain only date related retention criteria (VAULT DAYS and DAYS SINCE CREATE). Boxed volumes cannot contain non-date retention criteria (for example, CYCLE, MVS CATALOG).A name (unique 6-character identifier) and capacity (size) is defined for each box. The number of boxes that can be defined, as well as the size of a box, are unlimited. A minimum number of volumes required in a box (BOXLIMIT) can be defined.

All boxes are defined in the vault named "MAINLIB" and are assumed to be empty. If MAINLIB is one of the destinations of the box in its vault pattern, use a vault name other than MAINLIB as an alias for the main library, and define the box slot capacity under that alias vault.

For information regarding the defining of boxes, refer to Vault Definition Facility.

When volumes are to be moved from MAINLIB, they are placed in an appropriate box and the box is moved to the appropriate location.

When a vaulted volume needs to be processed in MAINLIB, the complete box (with all its volumes) is recalled from its current location. After the volume is processed, the box returns to its original vault location.

No volumes are added or removed from a box until the box completes the vault cycle and returns to MAINLIB. At that point, the box is assumed to be empty again.

To request vaulting by boxes, the user must specify the expression BY BOX=Y in the DO VAULT statement in the rule definition. This allows the volume using that rule definition to be placed in a box. The volume is placed in a box according to other conditions such as the number of free boxes.

When utility CTTVTM is processing these volumes, it sorts them according to media type and vault pattern. It then looks for an empty box that supports the media type and places the volumes in the box.

A set of volumes that are vaulted by box, but contains fewer volumes than specified by the BOXLIMIT parameter is vaulted without a box using the regular volume vaulting process (in a slot). For more information, see utility CTTVTM in the INCONTROL for z/OS Utilities Guide.

When CTTVTM must move a volume that is vaulted in a box, the whole box is moved to the next location, including all the volumes contained in that box. When there is no next entry, or when the next entry is MAINLIB and is also the last entry in the vault pattern, all volumes are removed from the box and the box is marked EMPTY.

Unless specifically requested, utility CTTVTM does not reload the box definition on each invocation. To add, delete, or update box definitions, CTTVTM must be invoked in a special mode, by specifying parameter BOXBLD.

A user who is using box management for the first time should first run utility CTTVTM with parameter BOXBLD, so that the utility defines the boxes in the Media Database.

Utility CTTVTM produces special reports detailing the movement of boxes. The reports indicate that volumes are placed in specified boxes, and that boxes are moved between the vault locations.

For more information, see utility CTTVTM in the INCONTROL for z/OS Utilities Guide.