There may be another gotcha. A year ago last June, our shop was in the middle of a migration to a new datacenter. The concept was simple:
- Copy disks that were to be migrated into a "bunker box" - a SHARK facility equipped to synchronize data between the two centers. - Dress rehearsals to discover an fix any problems in the migration plans. These included synchronizing the data in the two centers ahead ago time and doing a final incremental sync when ready to try the migration. - Final migration. The DASD Storage Management Group, all z/OS-oriented people, scheduled time to move VM into the bunker box. In the week leading up to the move, they discovered that the utility they planned to use (and were assured by the vendor, who shall remain nameless but whose initials are IBM, that it could handle the task) would not copy the dasd used by VM. They had worked frantically with IBM trying to fix the problem. As a last-ditch effort, they were even sent another utility used internally by IBM that "definitely would work". It also failed. In near panic, it was 4:45 PM on Thursday and the move was supposed to take place at 9:00 AM Saturday, they asked me if I had any suggestions that would save the schedule. The answer was to build a one-pack system on DASD that was not being migrated and use several virtual machines to DDR the disks. Task accomplished, and the copying took only half the time that had been calculated for the z/OS utility. Unless they have been fixed, the z/OS utilities may fail when working with VM DASD. I imagine that DFDSS was the first of the utilities that failed. I do not even know the name of the one cloaked in black. Richard Schuh -----Original Message----- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Bohnsack Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 4:45 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE A "gotcha" with z/OS DFDSS is that you cannot use the stand alone DFDSS to restore CPVOL initialized dasd. In a D/R situation, you have to have z/OS restored enough to be able to run DFDSS under it to bring back the VM system. This may be what Doug was meant when he referred to the "restore considerations". Jim Doug Shupe wrote: > Daniel, > > You can get a valid/usable backup the z/VSE guest dasd with DDR -ONLY > IF- the z/VSE guest is shutdown while performing the backup. > > You can use z/OS DFDSS to backup the z/VM and z/VSE dasd but (IMHO) it > is not a wise solution because of the restore considerations. With > enough practice you could make it work. Problem is the z/VSE guest > would never work correctly unless it were shutdown during the backup. > > You can backup the running z/VM system with DDR (minus the page and > spool volumes - format the page and spool volumes, cold start the > spool after recovery). You would have to re-save CMS and other DCSS or > use SPXTAPE to save the information in the spool. > > Since you have a z/VM system, this would be a good time to try using > z/VM under z/VM to validate your recovery process. If you forgot > something just scrape the 2nd level system and start over. (kind of > like using Changeman to maintain Changeman). > > Would be glad to discuss with you offline. > > Best Regards, > Doug Shupe > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Daniel Allen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU> > Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 12:48 PM > Subject: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE > > > I have been given an assignment to backup our z/VM and z/VSE systems. > We also run z/OS. I know about DDR. Can I backup/restore both z/VM and > = > > z/VSE using DDR ? Can z/OS backup/restore z/VM ? > > -- Jim Bohnsack Cornell University (607) 255-1760 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
