Understanding the recovery control data set

The CICS® VR recovery control data set (RCDS) contains essential information for recovering your VSAM spheres.

The RCDS contains information on the following:

This information is stored in three identical linear VSAM data sets. Three data sets are used to reduce the possibility of data loss. CICS VR regularly checks to make sure the three data sets are consistent.

The information in the RCDS is updated under the following conditions:
You can reduce the likelihood of your RCDS becoming full by deregistering old information from the RCDS. You can set up automatic deregistration for your log streams (log stream copies or the log-tail), registered backups, and change accumulation data sets using the CICS VR panel interface. In addition, you can instantly deregister the following using the CICS VR dialog interface:

Deregistration is triggered by running scan or automatically by the CICS VR server address space. Once deregistered, CICS VR automatically reuses the freed space in the RCDS; you never need to manually recover free space. For more information on automatic deregistration, see Understanding CICS VR automatic deregistration.

The RCDS must be allocated to a recover job for batch REDO after images unless the recover being run also specifies the REMOTE keyword.

Note: CICS VR issues an ENQ for each of the RCDSs with QNAME DWWCON,RNAME datasetname, and with scope SYSTEMS.