When you use most PDS datasets, the data has to be read from disk each time. (The exception is data sets in the Linklist LookAside(LLA) which do get cached. This blog post explains the set up to get your PDSEs cached in z/OS. There is a Red book Partitioned Data Set Extended Usage Guide SG24-6106-01 which covers this topic.
One of the benefits of using a PDSE is that you can get the data sets cached in Hiperspace in z/OS memory.
A C program I am working on takes about 8 seconds to compile in batch, and spends less than half a second doing I/O, so caching your PDSEs may not give you much benefit. You should try it youself as mileage may vary.
SMSPDSEs
The caching of information for PDSEs is doing in the SMSPDSE component of SMS.
You can have two addresses spaces for caching PDSE data sets
- SMSPDSE caches the directory of PDSE data sets. It also caches PDSEs that are contained in the LNKLIST. SMSPDSE is configured using the parmlib concatenation member IGDSMSxx. If you want to change the configuration you have to re ipl.
- SMPPDSE1. This is used to cache other eligible PDSEs. SMSPDSE1 is configured using the parmlib concatenation member IGDSMSxx. You can issue a command to restart this address space, and pick up any parameter changes – this is why is is known as the restartable address space.
It is easy to create the SMPDSE1 address space. It is described here.
Making PDSE data sets eligible for caching.
It is more complex than just setting a switch on a data set.
The Storage Class controls whether a PDSE is eligible for caching. It is more complex than just setting a simple switch. The eligibility of caching is controlled by the Direct MilliSecond Response time. (Which means the Response time in MilliSeconds of Direct (non sequential) requests). If you use ISMF to display the Storage Classes, one of the fields is the Direct MSR. The documentation says If the MSR is < 9 then the value is “must cache”, 10 -998 “may cache”, 999 “never cache”. I only got caching if MSR was <= 9.
If you change the Storage Class remember to use the command setsms scds(SYS1.S0W1.DFSMS.SCDS) to refresh SMS.
Change your data set to use the appropriate Storage Class with the valid Direct MSR.
By default the SMSPDSE1 address space caches the PDSE until the data set is closed. This means that PDSEs are not cached between jobs. You can change this using the commands
setsms PDSE1_BUFFER_BEYOND_CLOSE(YES)
VARY SMS,PDSE1,RESTART
Or just update the parameter in the parmlib IGDSMSxx member.
If you now use your PDSE it should be cached in Hiperspace.
You can use the command d sms,pdse1,hspstats to see what is cached.
This gave me
D SMS,PDSE1,HSPSTATS
IGW048I PDSE HSPSTATS Start of Report(SMSPDSE1) 531
HiperSpace Size: 256 MB
LRUTime : 50 Seconds LRUCycles: 200 Cycles
BMF Time interval 300 Seconds
---------data set name-----------------------Cache--Always-DoNot
Elig---Cache--Cache
CSQ911.SCSQAUTH N N N
CSQ911.SCSQMSGE N N N
CSQ911.SCSQPNLE N N N
CSQ911.SCSQTBLE N N N
CBC.SCCNCMP N N N
CEE.SCEERUN2 N N N
COLIN.JCL Y Y N
COLIN.SCEEH.SYS.H Y Y N
COLIN.SCEEH.H Y Y N
PDSE HSPSTATS End of Report(SMSPDSE1)
The CSQ9* data sets are PDSEs in Link List. The COLIN.* data sets are my PDSEs in storage class SCAPPL. They have Always Cache specified. If you restart the SMSPDSE1 address space, the cache will be cleared.
You can use the commands
- d sms,pdse1,hspstats,DSN(COLIN.*) to display a subset of data sets
- d sms,pdse1,hspstats,STORCLAS(SCAPPL) to display the data sets in a storage class
SMF data on datasets
There were SMF 42.6 records for the SMSPDSE1 address space showing I/O to the PDSEs.
My jobs doing I/O to the PDSEs did not have a record for the PDSE in the SMF 42.6.
SMF data on SMSPDSE* buffer usage
Below is the printout from the SMF 42 subtype 1 records.
- BMF:==TOTAL==
- Data pages read: 20304 read by BMF: 567 <not read by BMF: 19737 ( 97 %) >
- Directory pages read: 649 read by BMF: 642 <not read by BMF: 7 ( 1 %) >
- SC:SCBASE
- Data pages read: 183 read by BMF: 0 <not read by BMF: 183 (100 %)>
- Directory pages read: 64 read by BMF: <60 not read by BMF: 4 ( 6 %) >
- SC:SCAPPL
- Data pages read: 567 read by BMF: 567 <not read by BMF: 0 ( 0 %) >
- Directory pages read: 472 read by BMF: 472 <not read by BMF: 0 ( 0 %) >
- SC:**NONE**
- Data pages read: 19554 read by BMF: 0 <not read by BMF: 19554 (100 %)>
- Directory pages read: 113 read by BMF: 110 <not read by BMF: 3 ( 2 %)>
We can see that for Storage Class SCAPPL all pages requested were in the cache.
Will this speed up my thousands of C compiles ?
Not necessarily. See the problems I had.
- The C header files are in a PDS – not a PDSE, so you would have to convert the PDSs to PDSEs
- The C compiler uses the SEARCH(“CEE.SCEE.H.*”) option which says read from this library. This may override your JCL if you decide to create new PDSEs for the C header files.
- When I compiled in USS my defaults had SEARCH(/usr/include/). This directory was on ZFS.Z24A.VERSION a ZFS file system. The files on the ZFS may be cached.
When I ran my compile,there were 31 SMF 42.6 records for CEE.SCEE.H, giving a total of 111 I/Os, there were 2 records for CEE.SCEE.SYS.H with a total I/O count of 14. If each I/O takes 1 millisecond this is 125 milliseconds doing disk I/O to the PDS, so I expect it is not worth converting compiles to use PDSEs and caching them.
ColinPaice 