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]
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
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]
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
-Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Schuh, Richard Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 11:46 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE 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 That is very strange. I have successfully dumped and restored z/VM DASD using DFDSS on z/OS 1.6. The z/VM system was down at the time. Oh, but this was via TAPE, not disk-to-disk. That may be the difference. -- John McKown Senior Systems Programmer HealthMarkets Keeping the Promise of Affordable Coverage Administrative Services Group Information Technology The information contained in this e-mail message may be privileged and/or confidential. It is for intended addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, reproduction, distribution or other use of this communication is strictly prohibited and could, in certain circumstances, be a criminal offense. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by reply and delete this message without copying or disclosing it.
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
That is strange, because I've used DFDSS to restore z/VM dasd. That was where I discovered the sentence in the DFDSS manual that says that you can't use the S/A version. Our D/R backups here are done with Shark flashcopy and then ADRDSSU to dump from the flashed target to tape. I have restored dumped tapes to DASD and have been able to IPL the restored volume. Jim McKown, John wrote: -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System=20 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Schuh, Richard Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 11:46 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE =20 =20 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: =20 - 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. =20 The DASD Storage Management Group, all z/OS-oriented people, scheduled time to move VM into the bunker box. In the week leading up=20 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=20 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=20 place at 9:00 AM Saturday, they asked me if I had any suggestions that=20 would save the schedule. The answer was to build a one-pack system on DASD=20 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. =20 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.=20 =20 =20 Richard Schuh=20 That is very strange. I have successfully dumped and restored z/VM DASD using DFDSS on z/OS 1.6. The z/VM system was down at the time. Oh, but this was via TAPE, not disk-to-disk. That may be the difference. -- John McKown Senior Systems Programmer HealthMarkets Keeping the Promise of Affordable Coverage Administrative Services Group Information Technology The information contained in this e-mail message may be privileged and/or confidential. It is for intended addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, reproduction, distribution or other use of this communication is strictly prohibited and could, in certain circumstances, be a criminal offense. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by reply and delete this message without copying or disclosing it.=20 -- Jim Bohnsack Cornell University (607) 255-1760 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
It may be a failure in the disk to disk path. Also, our dasd farm has been growing around us for years, some 15 years before I arrived on the scene and nearly another nine since. There is no telling how some of the disks may have been initialized. I am sure that some were inherited from our other mainframe operating systems, both MVS and derivatives and TPF. Some may even have been formatted as CMS disks. It may be a device label or VTOC problem. I know that there were problems with VTOCs early in the days of ACP. -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of McKown, John Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 9:56 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Schuh, Richard Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 11:46 AM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU Subject: Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE 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 That is very strange. I have successfully dumped and restored z/VM DASD using DFDSS on z/OS 1.6. The z/VM system was down at the time. Oh, but this was via TAPE, not disk-to-disk. That may be the difference. -- John McKown Senior Systems Programmer HealthMarkets Keeping the Promise of Affordable Coverage Administrative Services Group Information Technology The information contained in this e-mail message may be privileged and/or confidential. It is for intended addressee(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, reproduction, distribution or other use of this communication is strictly prohibited and could, in certain circumstances, be a criminal offense. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender by reply and delete this message without copying or disclosing it.
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
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 ?
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
I would beg to differ w/ this you can recover any component of a backed up running VSE system how many system crashes are planned ? w/ op system down ? what good is a DR plan if you can only restore from a planned outage ? VSE utilities should also be used as fallback , such as power off-loads, fcopy etc. Doug Shupe [EMAIL PROTECTED] .net To Sent by: The IBM IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU z/VM Operating cc System [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject ARK.EDU Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE 01/01/2007 10:25 PM Please respond to The IBM z/VM Operating System [EMAIL PROTECTED] ARK.EDU 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 ?
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 ?
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
I hope you understand that backing up a running z/VM system may not yield a relyable backup: if a CMS minidisk is being updated while you back it up (using DDR or FDR) it is possible that after a restore the minidisk cannot be ACCESSed anymore. Kris, IBM Belgium, VM customer support Stracka, James (GTI) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: The IBM z/VM Operating System IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU 2006-12-28 18:59 Please respond to The IBM z/VM Operating System IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU To IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU cc Subject Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE FDR does a very good job of backup/restore of z/VM DASD. -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Daniel Allen Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 12:48 PM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU 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 ? If you are not an intended recipient of this e-mail, please notify the sender, delete it and do not read, act upon, print, disclose, copy, retain or redistribute it. Click here for important additional terms relating to this e-mail. http://www.ml.com/email_terms/
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
Yes, DDR or FDR or ADRDSSU can do Disaster Backups of your z/VM, z/VSE or z/OS DASD. There are two catches with this. These Disaster backups do not work well for dynamic data such as SPOOL, Shared File Systems, Databases, Linux filesystems. You must make sure that these dynamic areas are not being updated. I always do separate backups of the SPOOL and SFS data. Database s and Linuxes should be logged off for data consistency. The second catch i s that DDR, FDR ADRDSSU backups of z/VM data are not for file level restores. Not knowing enough about the VTOC requirements, I am unwilling to try a track level restore of z/OS or z/VSE datasets. /Tom Kern /301-903-2211 On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 11:48:00 -0600, Daniel Allen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrot e: 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 ? = ===
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
That said (backing up a running z/VM system may not yield a reliable backup), for probably a decade or so our MVS system took FDR backups of our running VM system before we were permitted to use VM:Backup (which was backing up our CMS files) for D.R. backups. In those dozen-or-so years we never failed to be able to restore the system at the D.R. site using FDR restore. We did SPTAPE (before SPXTAPE was available) backups for the SDFs (but not user SPOOL files which were proclaimed transitory). Now... that said, CMS file systems are different beasts than Linux file systems. CMS did not cache at that time, while Linux file systems seem to (if I understand them correctly) really love to cache for a while before committing to disk. If you want reliable VM, VSE and Linux guest backups, as Kris said, ensure that no changes are being made while MVS backs them up. That's tough to do without shutting down the systems. An alternative is to use a backup system that is actually running on those systems, which is aware of the file systems they use and take them into consideration. That also permits you, if you choose that form of backup, to restore individual files. Unless the systems shutdown are SPOOL systems generally require system-specific utility commands/programs. H backup alternatives, their pros and cons would make a pretty good session at SHARE and other user group meetings, no? Mike Walter Hewitt Associates Any opinions expressed herein are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of Hewitt Associates. Kris Buelens [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: The IBM z/VM Operating System IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU 12/28/2006 12:23 PM Please respond to The IBM z/VM Operating System IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU To IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU cc Subject Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE I hope you understand that backing up a running z/VM system may not yield a relyable backup: if a CMS minidisk is being updated while you back it up (using DDR or FDR) it is possible that after a restore the minidisk cannot be ACCESSed anymore. Kris, IBM Belgium, VM customer support Stracka, James (GTI) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: The IBM z/VM Operating System IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU 2006-12-28 18:59 Please respond to The IBM z/VM Operating System IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU To IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU cc Subject Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE FDR does a very good job of backup/restore of z/VM DASD. -Original Message- From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Daniel Allen Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 12:48 PM To: IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU 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 ? If you are not an intended recipient of this e-mail, please notify the sender, delete it and do not read, act upon, print, disclose, copy, retain or redistribute it. Click here for important additional terms relating to this e-mail. http://www.ml.com/email_terms/ The information contained in this e-mail and any accompanying documents may contain information that is confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, or if this message has been addressed to you in error, please immediately alert the sender by reply e-mail and then delete this message, including any attachments. Any dissemination, distribution or other use of the contents of this message by anyone other than the intended recipient is strictly prohibited.
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
Rick Barlow used to do a very good DR presentation at SHARE showing VM:Backup and VM:Backup HiDRo in all there best. Bill Munson IT Specialist Office of Information Technology State of New Jersey (609) 984-4065 President MVMUA http://www.marist.edu/~mvmua Mike Walter wrote: H backup alternatives, their pros and cons would make a pretty good session at SHARE and other user group meetings, no? Mike Walter Hewitt Associates Any opinions expressed herein are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of Hewitt Associates.
Re: 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 ? DDR is OS-agnostic. If it's got bits in the standard formats, DDR can dump and restore it. You do need to be cautious about dumping running systems; spool, warmstart, checkpoint areas will tend not to be consistent, and require a little repair after restores. It's also wise to ensure that you have a SPXTAPE dump of your spool files and NSS files. Can z/OS backup/restore z/VM ? ADRDSSU can (it's roughly analogous to DDR). Same caveats apply.
Re: Backup of z/VM and z/VSE
H backup alternatives, their pros and cons would make a pretty good session at SHARE and other user group meetings, no? Already scheduled for WAVV, with a preview at the next Hillgang. 8-)
