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Status Submitted
Workspace z/OS
Created by Guest
Created on Jan 16, 2025

Enhance the PFA_COMMON_STORAGE health check

The output in SDSF for the PFA_COMMON_STORAGE health check can identify address spaces which are leading the charge for exhausting common storage but it does not do a great job at identifying what within that address space might be obtaining common storage. Some might look at the check output and see something like Websphere with the most growth and open a case with IBM Websphere only to find out its really a vendor product that's driving the growth within the Websphere address space. By this time it may be too late to get a case open with the vendor before taking an outage. It looks like the data required for this extra detail is collected in the PFA exception directories but there is no detail available for the format of the contents of these files.

Rather than just creating the ZFS files, it would be great if the PFA check output could be enhanced to highlight what it believes are the modules (both the address of the module and name if available) that are driving the most recent common storage growth and any other problem determination insight. Examples of this insight could be the length and number of the blocks of common causing the most growth, and if they're known IBM blocks such as VSMPs, comm server related blocks, etc. This would help lesser experienced support staff identify the correct vendor/component faster and maybe prevent an unplanned outage. With all the talk of AI, this seems like a good candidate.

Idea priority High