Storage Management Component (SMC) is the interface between IBM's z/OS operating system and Oracle's StorageTek automated library control systems, HSC and MVS/CSC.
SMC resides on every MVS host that accesses StorageTek real and virtual tape hardware. It operates on both JES2 and JES3 systems and is a required ELS component.
SMC primary functions include:
Influencing tape allocation according to hardware requirements and customer policies to ensure that appropriate tape drives are selected
Intercepting tape management and operating system mount, dismount, and swap messages and translating them to request the required tape hardware functions from the appropriate ELS automated library control system
Coordinating requests among multiple StorageTek TapePlexes
A TapePlex is a single StorageTek hardware configuration, normally represented by a single HSC Control Data Set (CDS). A TapePlex may contain multiple Automated Cartridge Systems (ACSs) and Virtual Tape Storage Subsystems (VTSSs).
SMC may communicate with any number of TapePlexes, using cross address space facilities to communicate with HSC or MVS/CSC running on the same host, and TCP/IP to communicate with HSC systems executing on other hosts.
Note the following:
MVS/CSC 7.1 and later is not compatible with StorageTek LibraryStation. In an MVS-only environment, you must use SMC and its HTTP server component to provide communication between MVS hosts. See Chapter 3, "SMC and StorageTek TapePlex Management" for more information.
For the purposes of this publication, HSC refers to the MVS implementation of HSC. SMC does not support the VM implementation of HSC.