BRMS Maintenance does not honor *DENIED functional usage on media classes. STRBRMMNT to include media class granularity pls

DSI advised us to initialize the expired VTL tapes to better manage the backend storage used. we use the Restricted media classes for our Point in Time backups in Production estate. So, we seeked some advise under case mentioned above and also from ihA toolkit Lab services support (Christian Aasland) to confirm that when Point in Time backup is in progress and if BRMS maintenance is run on Production LPAR, BRMS maintenance job ((STRMNTBRM or STREXPBRM) would not touch (or skip) the restricted media classes used by point in time lpar.
Upon his test, Christian confirmed that BRMS Maintenance does not honor *DENIED functional usage on media classes.

Can such granularity check on media class functional usage be considered on media-class granularity on strmntbrm or strexpbrm by NRMS development team, which sits well with iHA toolkit setup and customers may setup BRMS maintenance job without worrying about the Point in Time status.

Snippet of email from Christian is attached for your reference.

Subject : Re: BRMS initialise expired tapes and restricted media class [TS007628118]

Hi Shripad,

I did some testing and found that the BRMS maintenance procedure does not honor denied default authorities. Until BRMS addresses this, I would recommend that BRMS maintenance not be performed while there is a flashcopy backup for that LPAR running.

I got access to your support case and Aleksandar's answer is correct, but what you could do is request that "BRMS Maintenance does not honor *DENIED functional usage on media classes".

Some background:

The BRMS flashcopy functionality only supports moving the entire QUSRBRM library from the target to the source LPAR, i.e. BRMS Xfer method *ALL. This method will put BRMS into a *STRPRC state and prevent maintenance etc. from running.

However, this creates two restrictions:
1. BRMS must not be used on the source LPAR between the time of flashcopy and when QUSRBRM is copied back
2. No concurrent BRMS+flashcopies are allowed

Both of those restrictions would be detrimental to many toolkit customers, including HSBC.

To address this, I worked with the BRMS development team to create the *CHGONLY method of moving changed BRMS records. To be clear, "worked with the BRMS team" is not equivalent to "BRMS supports *CHGONLY", rather that we worked together to identify problems so the toolkit could address them.

When a flashcopy occurs without using the standard BRMS FSFC methods (i.e. INZBRM *FLASHCOPY *STRPRC etc) BRMS is not able to protect the media, so we must do so using functional authority at the media class level. When you specify a "restricted media class" the toolkit will change the functional authority on the source LPAR to be *DENIED so media in that media class would not be used or changed. Clearly BRMS Maintenance (STRMNTBRM or STREXPBRM) isn't honoring that.

Unfortunately BRMS does not have media-class granularity on strmntbrm or strexpbrm ... I wonder if there are alternate ways to trigger the initialization? For example, building a tool that looks at the data in qa1amm to identify the tapes you need to initialize and then issuing the INZTAPBRM?
Christian Aasland
HA/DR Software Engineer & Consultant
IBM Technology - Lab Services
Phone: +1-720-342-8064
Email : aasland@us.ibm.com
PowerHA Tools: https://ibm.biz/PowerHATools


Thanks in advance.

Make STRBRMMNT or STREXPBRM commands to check media class denial status set thru restricted media class in FSFC configs