Of the four major SMS constructs, the Storage Group is one of the most important, and at the same time one of the most misunderstood. The Storage Group sits at the boundary between datasets, volumes, and storage managers such as DFSMShsm and FDRABR, critically affecting the use of each. There are seven different types of storage groups, each having different attributes and each appropriate for different types of data. The storage group definitions have an important impact on reliability, including on the availability of free space in the system and the placement of datasets on volumes. In this month’s webinar we’ll discuss the role that Storage Groups play in DFSMS and the best practices for defining and using them.