Hi,


Overall, a 4-tiered approach would be ideal:



o Full volume backups



o Incremental backups



o Local/administrator access backups



o Disaster Recovery mirroring



++++++++++++++



Fullpack volume backups ---- can be run daily, weekly and monthly, using JCL 
with automation tools (existing on z/OS already, e.g. BMC Control-M or Tivoli 
Automation). This should be done with all z/VM and zLinux volumes.



In the full volume backup cases, stopping/shutting down is not always 
necessary, albeit it may be good practice to at least quiesce when it comes to 
DB’s and heavy use servers. (e.g. DB2, Oracle, etc)



++++++++++++++

Incremental backups --- should also be done, separately. When performing 
incremental backups, a full volume backup is done first. This also allows for 
full volume restores, from another backup source and/or method. A file or 
filesystem itself can be backed up or restored using previous iterations of 
saved copies.

Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) is one option that can do this, from IBM.

FDR Upstream is a another option, from Innovation. Similarly, it can  be used 
primarlily for the zLinux filesystems, where the server resides on z/OS.

FDR Upstream Reservoir can be used in place of the z/OS server, which allows 
putting the backups/server on another platform (x86, AIX, SUN, etc.). The 
Reservoir scheme may require tape management for z/VM, so it is recommended to 
use the z/OS server repository (just plain UPSTREAM).

HIDRO, VM:Backup or IBM’s z/VM Backup and Restore Manager…these are good for 
full/minidisk backups, but will NOT be able to backup to the zLinux filesystem 
level, which might not be helpful to you, unless combined with one of the 
products above. However, these two products are very good solutions for z/VM 
minidisks/CMS users.

I think NetBackup can be used this way too, but I have never administered that 
product.

++++++++++++++



Local/manual backup ---- In the x86 and UNIX world, restoration of files and 
filesystems are done on Linux, AIX and Solaris via NetBackup and Flash Archive 
images (FLAR). Solaris admins state that this method can take hours to recover 
full LDOM images or large filesystems.



There are some other methods that can be relatively crude or even redundant 
(whether manually done or automated) in doing local backups to zLinux 
filesystems. This includes tools like rsync, etc.



However, some centralized solutions are available for zLiunx. For example, with 
RHEL via their RH Satellite server. This also provides a change management 
solution that may be already practiced by x86 RHEL admins, which may be 
helpful. The x86 RHEL sat server admins can carve an organization out for the 
zLinux folks. It would provide better transition for administrators and 
configuration/file migration (if moving applications between platforms). The RH 
Satellite server can provision new RHEL guests and backup all filesystems for 
full image recovery (if needed from another source). Although, this is a good 
solution for file/filesystem level backup, since it can provide multiple 
iterations of files. Therefore, the administrator could logon to the RH 
Satellite server, retrieve and deploy older versions of files. Or they could 
restore filesystems and entire images.



++++++++++++++



Disaster Recovery ----- also should be addressed. Mirroring can be used to 
easily copy data off-site; for many, this is a commonly used by mid to large 
shops with z/OS and z/VM.





Doug Ponte

U.S. Department of Justice - OCIO/SDS/zVM

Contractor - z/VM + zLinux Senior Systems Programmer

Leidos/Ingersoll Consulting

[email protected]

1-202-307-6722





-----Original Message-----
From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Marcy 
Cortes
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2016 13:33
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: zLinux backup solutions



There are other vendors as well

Symantec Netbackup

Innovation Data Processings FDR product.



Perhaps you can use the same thing as what is used with your x86 servers?



There may be more.





-----Original Message-----

From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Scott 
Rohling

Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2016 9:40 AM

To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

Subject: Re: [LINUX-390] zLinux backup solutions



Yes - a logical backup solution --   TSM is an IBM solution....    you need

a backup client which can read your filesystems and send them to a server for 
archiving/retrieval  ....



A physical backup of the hard drives will always require a quiesced system for 
a clean backup.



Scott Rohling



On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 9:15 AM, Neal Scheffler 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:



> To get a clean backup of our zLinux servers we currently shutdown the

> zLinux server and do full volume backups of its disks.

>

> Is there some other method / product available that we could use to

> get a clean backup without having to take an outage on the zLinux server?

>

> Thanks,

> Neal

>

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