...
>VMTAPE, however, will 'expire' it in 30 days and mark it as available for
>a scratch request by ADSM in that pool.  My questions are

That may not be a correct assumption.  According to the User's Guide, expired
tapes don't become available for scratch volumes unless the SCRATCH command is
run.  We've run WDSF for several years and ADSM for at least one.  We never run
the SRCATCH command because we use the BIN system and in general do not supply
scratch tapes.  The tapes used by ADSM and WDSF are in scratch pools defined by
the POOLASGN and POOLNAME files.  Our mount machines DSMOUNT* and DSMEXIT* all
use RETPD 1000 in the VMTAPE MOUNT command As long as you don't run SCRATCH, I
don't think there is a problem.  At least we have never had a problem and have
never been concerned about the expiration date.
   Bob Fowles, Center for Academic Computing, Penn State