Managing RAW Volumes

Well I was recently called by another IBMer and asked how to use RAW volumes. The person called to ask why sometimes DSMFMT will format quite fast on one machine then take forever on another machine. Well one thing you have to understand about DSMFMT is that it's taking that file and making the space within it RAW. If you've ever looked inside an unused TSM volume you'll see it is a text file filled with ADSM over and over (they might have changed the fill but when I was teaching TSM thats what we saw). So why use RAW instead of actual files (other than files being a redundant process)? FAST! EASY! and when speed in DR is key it's the only way to go. It's actually easier than one would think and with a little script you can manage your RAW volumes and hdisks easily. I'll post the script along with a script to querry the serial and WWN of your tape drives. These two scripts come courtesy of Hari Patel my co-worker who is a PERL mad man. (Download tar/zip)