Two decades of policy-based storage management for the IBM mainframe computer

Today, storage management vendors see the need and business opportunity for an enterprise-wide policy-based storage management solution for their customers. In the middle 1980s, IBM introduced the Data Facility Storage Management Subsystem (DFSMS) as a policy-based storage management solution for large mainframe computer systems. As an integral part of the operating systems OS/390® and z/OS™, DFSMS continues to be enhanced. This paper provides an overview of DFSMS and describes a few of its recent enhancements.