Understanding what is deregistered and deleted by CICS® VR automatic deregistration

CICS® VR automatic deregistration deregisters, and optionally deletes, information that relates to the retention settings that have been set.

The following summarizes what is deregistered and deleted when the corresponding retention settings are specified:
Retention period for blocks
  • All MVS™ blocks on all registered forward recovery and log of logs log streams that are older than the specified retention period are deleted. CICS® VR issues the IXGDELET service to mark the outdated blocks for deletion.
  • All VSAM sphere update activity that is older than the specified retention period is deregistered from the RCDS if no correspond log stream copies are still registered to CICS® VR.
Retention period for copies
  • All registered log stream copies where the latest time stamp in the copy is older than the specified retention period are deregistered from the RCDS.
  • All VSAM sphere update activity that is older than the specified retention period is deregistered from the RCDS if the corresponding forward recovery log stream blocks also have been deleted.
  • If the Uncatalog and delete setting is 1 (Yes), all registered log stream copies where the last time stamp in the copy is older than the specified retention period are uncataloged and deleted. If a non-SMS log stream copy resides on tape, it is uncataloged, but not deleted
Retention period for Change accumulation
  • All change accumulation information that is older than the specified retention period is deregistered from the RCDS.
  • If the Uncatalog and delete setting is 1 (Yes), all change accumulation information that is older than the specified retention period is uncataloged and deleted.
Retention setting for backups (Backup retention period, Use log retention period, or Use catalog information)
All information about backups that meet the specified automatic backup deregistration setting is deleted from the RCDS.

If the Uncatalog and delete setting for automatic backup deregistration is 1 (Yes), CICS® VR attempts to uncatalog and delete all registered non-DFSMShsm and non-ABARS backups backups that are automatically deregistered from the RCDS. Non-SMS backups that reside on tape are uncataloged but not deleted.

Any retention period setting
If you have specified a retention period for MVS™ blocks, log stream copies, or backups, CICS® VR automatic deregistration deregisters the following additional information from the RCDS:
  • All information about CICS® VR recovery job steps that were created before the maximum retention period value is deregistered from the RCDS.
  • All VSAM sphere entries that no longer have any associated backups or update activity registered in the RCDS are deregistered from the RCDS.
CICS® VR uses the largest retention period setting when determining whether to delete this information. For example, if you specified a retention period value of two days for MVS™ blocks, five days for log stream copies, and five days for backups, CICS® VR uses the maximum retention period value of five days.