IBM BACKUP SYSTEM was introduced some time ago and now it is time for us to support this feature in our tools. We have recently developed some important enhancements in CA Merge/Modify, CA Recovery Analyzer, CA Fast Recover in CA release 19. All forward-fits for release 20 is planned to be done soon.
Why to use SLBs
SLBs are used in environments where per-object backup would be inefficient because of large number of small database objects (there is a per-object overhead).
A SAP environment with thousands of objects is a good candidate for SLB, because the SLB is a volume-level copy where the number of database objects doesn't affect performance.
CA Fast Recover
CA Fast Recover can recover tablespaces and indexspaces from the previously created SLBs. Recovery from SLB doesn’t require a special syntax in your JCLs, you just need to enable recovery from SLBs in the PARMLIB.
PARMLIB definition
Let’s start with description in PARMLIB. The new option is defined as follows:
Option name: USE-SYSBACKUP
Possible values: YES, NO
USE-SYSBACKUP(YES) - CA Fast Recover will recognize SLBs
USE-SYSBACKUP(NO) - CA Fast Recover will ignore SLBs. In emergency cases, this option allows you to recover from other backups if you cannot recover from SLB.
FREDPM1 ----------- Edit Parmlib Member PFR ----------- 2017/10/10 11:22
OPTION ===>
Type the information in the fields below. Options panel 1 of 5
Abend if return code is > 4...> NO (Yes or No)
Allmsgs.......................> NO (Yes or No)
Stop Limit....................> 05 (Numeric)
Default sort message level....> ALL (All, None or Critical)
Default sort device type......> SYSDA (Device name)
Default sort number...........> 003 (Numeric)
Default sort storage size.....> 4M (?, ?K or ?M)
Use system-level backups......> YES (YES OR NO)
Press PF1 for help. Press ENTER to continue.
Type Cancel, Main, or Exit to quit.
This is the replacement of an equivalent IBM DB2 ZPARM. CA tools do not use the ZPARM subsystem parameters – SYSTEM_LEVEL_BACKUPS
We also recommend that the IBM DB2 ZPARM SYSTEM_LEVEL_BACKUPS parameter is set to YES. This will ensure recovery from SLB in case the CA Fast Recover has to call IBM to perform the recovery.
The good news is you do not have to change your syntax to use SLB to recover data.
//*--------------------------------------------------------------------
//* RECOVER USING SYSTEM-LEVEL BACKUP
//*--------------------------------------------------------------------
//RECOVER EXEC PT@UTIL
RECOVER TABLESPACE P981DB.P981TSP
If PFR uses SLB as a source for recover the messages below will be visible:
When recovery from SLB fails…
- If an SLB is identified as invalid, CA Fast Recover will try to fall back to the previously created image copies or SLBs.
- If the DFSMShsm commands fail to restore the DB2 VSAM datasets, CA Fast Recover™ for DB2 for z/OS displays an error message that identifies the DB2 VSAM dataset affected, return and reason code returned by the DFSMShsm command and additional information. Processing is terminated. For more information on the failure, review the messages displayed by the DFSMShsm started task.
- To display the DFSMShsm commands in the PTIIMSG dataset, specify the ALLMSGS keyword in the syntax.
CA Recovery Analyzer
We enhanced CA Recovery Analyzer to incorporate the system-level backups in the recovery analysis. A particular system-level backup can be conveniently selected as a recovery point.
Components affected
- Recovery Strategies
- Quick Recovery
We updated the Global Strategy Recovery Options panel to allow to select SLB as a point of recovery
19.0 ----------- Global Strategy Recovery Options ---------- 17/03/20 07:09
COMMAND ===> SCROLL ===> CSR
Strategy ===> TESTPART Creator ===> KALMI05
---------------------------------------------------------------------- KALMI05
Global Strategy Recovery Options:
Utility Vendor ===> I (C(ca)/IBM/Other/Mix/Update)
Include Indexes ===> Y (Yes/No/Repair/Separate step)
Recovery Point ===> N (Cur/Rba or lrsn/Upd/Dis/Qui/Ful/Inc/copY/
No/iX only/rePair/cOmmon qui/chKpt rba/Slb)
Recover via Logonly ===> N (Yes/No)
Avoid Recovery ===> N (Yes/No)
Optimize Recovery ===> N (Rba/Vol/Ord/No)
Allow non-DB2 backups ===> N (Yes/No) ==> HSM/FDR/DFSMSDSS/DSN1COPY
Allow Full Pack Backups ===> N (Yes/No) ==> FDR/DFSMSDSS
Image Copy Before ===> Y (Yes/No)
Runstats ===> N (Yes/No/Report Only)
Quiesce ===> N (Yes/No)
Check Utility ===> N (Yes/No/Repair)
Image Copy After ===> N (Yes/No/Repair)
Image Copy Retain ===> N (Yes/No)
Rebuild V6 Idxs/Errors ===> N (Yes/No)
Alter Jobcard specs ===> N (Yes/No)
Autobuild TBS/IDX ===> P (Part/All) Copy or Recover
Base and Clone Processing => A (base And clone/Base only/Clone only)
Exclude Empty Tablespaces => Y (Yes/No)
Press END (PF3/15) to process SAVE to save defaults
When S is selected, a dialog that will allow to select a SLB will appear.
+ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Cmd Type Start RBA PIT RBA |
| _ FC 000000000001A074F10E 000000000001A0756448 |
| S FC 0000000000019AFA410E 0000000000019B07B83A |
| _ FC 000000000001954C0C90 000000000001956F4762 |
| _ FC 000000000001952FC10E 000000000001954D2AA8 |
| _ FC 0000000000018FCCE10E 0000000000018FCD5448 |
| _ FC 0000000000017D2B610E 0000000000017FA62E76 |
| _ FC 00000000000176C4110E 000000000001770F3E27 |
| _ FC 000000000001767B710E 00000000000176A88306 |
| _ FC 0000000000016C09810E 000000000001704C6396 |
| F1=HELP F2=SPLIT F3=END F4=RETURN F5=RFIND F6=RCHANGE |
| F7=UP F8=DOWN F9=SWAP F10=LEFT F11=RIGHT |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
CA Recovery Analyzer allows to select one recovery point for whole strategy or quick recovery, but also allows to select individual recovery points for individual objects if needed.
Ca Merge/Modify
CA Merge/Modify can extract standard sequential image copy from the most recent SLB
- Extraction of Image copy from SLB is a three-step process
- Extraction of temporary DB2 VSAM datasets from the SLB
- Copying data from the temporary DB2 VSAM datasets to sequential image copy datasets.
- Deletion of the temporary DB2 VSAM datasets
Because of temporary disk space required by this processing we recommend 4 parallel tasks maximum when processing multiple objects with wildcarding.
MERGECOPY TABLESPACE database.tablespace
COPY-IMAGE-COPY LAST-SYSBACKUP
COPYDDN(dataset for a new image copy)
TEMPDDN(temporary dataset for data from SLB)
The following example creates a standard image copy from the System Level Backup for all tablespaces in the mmdb2 database using templates and wildcarding:
TEMPLATE TMPL_IC DSN 'COPIES.&DB..&TS..&UNIQ.'
TEMPLATE TMPL_TEMP DSN 'TEMP.&DB..&TS..&UNIQ.'
MERGECOPY TABLESPACE mmdb2.%
COPYDDN (TMPL_IC)
TEMPDDN (TMPL_TEMP)
COPY-IMAGE-COPY LAST-SYSBACKUP
TEMPDDN—Define the Temporary Data Set
The TEMPDDN keyword defines a template for the temporary data sets to be used by COPY-IMAGE-COPY LAST-SYSBACKUP function. These data set(s) are created only for the time of execution of the COPY-IMAGE-COPY function and deleted automatically.
We recommend setting the template to create datasets on volumes that allow fast replication to increase performance. You must set the template so that a unique dataset name is created for each partition by using suitable template symbols.
The new copy is registered in SYSIBM.SYSCOPY with the definition/parameters as follows (IBM REPORT):
- IC TYPE = F
- SHR LVL = C
- STARTLRSN = when the SLB copy was taken
- TYPE = SLB
- STYPE = blank