A common problem when running Acquire in production is how large to make the work files and the SORTWKxx files. The following notes should help to gauge the quantities of space needed. First, be assured that Acquire does not copy whole SMF records to its work files on a collection run, only the fields of use to creating the final output file. Selected data is stored in intermediate records in the WORKnn files.
Example of SCAN run sizing estimate
AZS227I ESTIMATED SIZE FOR WORK FILES WORK01 AND WORK03
AZS228I RECORDS SIZE:MB SIZE:CYL
AZS230I 891819 188 211
If you then run Acquire to collect data and set a control card of MSGLEVEL=2 you will be able to see details of how much data is written to the work files, and the size of each type of data. This information is contained in messages AZS510I, AZS511I and AZS512I as in the examples below.
Example of information for sizing
AZS304I 812.69 MB READ FROM //SMFDATA (109,550 RECORDS )
//....//
AZS510I INTERMEDIATE FILE RECORD ANALYSIS
AZS511I TYPE COUNT SIZE MB
AZS511I 01 9016 1.52
AZS511I 02 66248 17.33
AZS511I 03 1378268 188.89
AZS511I 04 3275 0.45
AZS511I 05 70383 4.93
AZS511I 06 720 0.25
AZS511I 07 8726 1.85
AZS511I *0 8726 1.85
AZS511I *1 0 0.00
AZS511I *2 0 0.00
AZS511I 10 5616 1.27
AZS511I 11 18000 2.85
AZS511I TOT 1560252 219.34
The report above shows the quantity of data read from SMF, and the quantity that translated to, by Acquire’s intermediate record types.
The types are detailed in the table below. If for example CICS=N was specified then that type will not be listed in the report.
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The earlier AZS304I message shows how much SMF data was read.
You can see from this example that 812 MB of raw data has been converted to 219 MB of WORK data. There is no easy formula to calculate the size of the work files will be from a particular size of input file. It is dependent on many things, how many Service or Report classes were active, the number of disk and tape drives, CICS transactions, DB2 activity and so on.
The size noted in the AZS511I TOT message can be used to check the sizes of the WORK01 file. If you use SORTWKxx files then supplying twice the size of the WORK01 file should provide ample room to sort data.
WORK04
The WORK04 file is only used if you have data from Acquire/DASD going into Acquire. This data is very small in comparison to other system-generated data, and generally only requires about 1 cylinder of space for up to 3,000 disks online at every capture interval. For example, if your system has 6,000 disks online and you are capturing data every 6 hours, in one day’s data there will be (6,000 / 3,000) = 2 cylinders of data per 6-hour interval. There will be 4 intervals per day, or in other words, about 2 * 4 = 8 cylinders of space will be needed for WORK04.If you are unsure, setting SPACE=(CYL(10,10)) will provide ample room.
Output file sizing
The AZS801I and AZS802I messages will tell you how much data was written away for Control Center to process.
AZS801I 0.64 MB WRITTEN TO /DataForCC/20161117000000_ezzs00010356.1030
AZS802I 4.38 MB WRITTEN TO //ATHDATA ( 51,255 RECORDS )The AZS801I message is repeated for each USS file created, and will not be present unless the USSPATH= control card is provided.
The AZS802I message will always be printed unless a control card of USSONLY=Y is provided.
You can also see here the difference in the amount of data written if USS output is compressed with the USSCOMP=Y control card. Without this control card in effect, the two values will be much nearer to each other, but never exactly the same. //ATHDATA is always slightly larger as it is a RECFM=VB file and the 4 byte lengths of records and blocks contribute to the total file size, whereas USS is a continuous stream of bytes, with records delimited by New Line characters (x'15').