Automated SMF Collection based on PARMLIB setting or z/OSMF Settings Plugin

SMF collection on z/OS does not establish a standard HLQ or dataset naming conventions for SMF collection and history. Basically every shop has their own process of collecting SMF which involves customization of z/OS exits to capture when the data is ready to be offloaded (MAN datasets full or logstream ready to offload) data which makes it impossible for z/OSMF or other system tools to "guess" or identify where the data is and contributes to non standardized environments.

The idea is to use the SMFPRMxx parmlib member not only to tell how we want to separate the SMF data, but also to define the naming convention for the collected SMF data so that z/OS could handle the collection process automatically.

For example when collecting from a logstream you have this :

ACTIVE

DEFAULTLSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..DFLT) 
      LSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..CICS,TYPE(110)), 
      LSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..DB2,TYPE(100,101,102)), 
      LSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..DSN,TYPE(14,15,17,18,36,42,60:69)), 
      LSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..MISC,TYPE(0:13,16,19:35,37:41,43:49, 
      51:59,84:98,103:109,111:114,120:255)), 
      LSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..NETW,TYPE(50,115:119)), 
      LSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..RMF,TYPE(70:79)), 
      LSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..SEC,TYPE(80:83))

There could be a section for the history SMF :

HISTORY

      DSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..CICS..&DDMMYY,TYPE(110)), 
      DSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..DB2.&DDMMYY,TYPE(100,101,102)), 
      DSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..DSN.&DDMMYY,TYPE(14,15,17,18,36,42,60:69)), 
      DSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..MISC.&DDMMYY,TYPE(0:13,16,19:35,37:41,43:49, 
      51:59,84:98,103:109,111:114,120:255)), 
      DSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..NETW.&DDMMYY,TYPE(50,115:119)), 
      DSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..RMF.&DDMMYY,TYPE(70:79)), 
      DSNAME(IFASMF.&SYSPLEX..SEC.&DDMMYY,TYPE(80:83))

For instance, considering the section above, z/OS would initiate the offload of SMF data to the defined datasets automatically and not depend on external schedulers/automation to accomplish collection. In the above example I've added &DDMMYY so that z/OS writes these datasets appending the time/date, an option could be provided to write directly to GDGs.