W dniu 15.10.2025 o 05:57, Peter pisze:
Hello
Just trying to understand some of your experience about physical tape
backup up.
I know almost most of the shops are tapeless.
But when you had physical tape ,
1 ) What are the files you backed up to 3590 ?
2 ) what was the retention period you followed for database , system
volumes and user datasets ?
3 ) Generally to recover an entire lpar from a physical tape a volume level
backup for an entire lpar would suffice ?
Any information on the above would help me to research further.
0) IMHO most shops still use tapes. Not real tapes, but all the shops do
not use real disk drives as well. That's important, because from z/OS
point of view there are tape volumes with tape data.
1) Nothing changed when moving from physical to virtual. Vast majority
is HSM data (backups, ML2, dumps).
2) It depends. Periods vary from week until infinity. Note, the
"infinity" means the datasets (managed by HSM) were moved from tape
generation to generation - so the real media is quite fresh, despite the
data is let's say 15 years old. However it is business issue, because
it's business data. For system data - you decide whether to keep
twentieth copy of RACF db or whole OS which was upgraded 2 years ago.
Note: no difference between physical and virtual tapes.
3) Usually you should have remote copy like PPRC or SRDF. It is IPLable
with very little actions, even it can be automated (GDPS, GDDR). However
if you want to restore the system from suitcase of cartridges - it is
still possible. First - you have to have real tapes at VTS backend.
AFAIK that means IBM and maybe one other vendor. Then... then there is
*a lot* of procedures & activities to start from scratch. Tape restore
is very small part of it.
The other scenario: the datacenter is ready for your needs - that means
CPC, DASD, VTS, SAN - everything *configured*. In that case... In that
case you don't need physical carts, because the logical tape volumes are
already replicated and reside within VTS box. Now it is up to you -
bother with IPL from (logical) tape or just use tech z/OS system
residing on DASD. Then you can simply submit few jobs - that's what I do
quite frequently to restore whole system (not necessarily for DR drills).
HTH
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
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