Re: BRMS Tape: was CPI3229: Total length of fields in file> 3.5GB !

James,

BRMS=Backup and Recovery Media Services.

Let's say you wanted to restore your item master file. Let's say you
wanted one from last Thursday. Now, you may think you have that covered
because that would have been tape id THU1 for Thursday, week 1 of the
rotation. Instead of having to manually track this you could do a
WRKOBJBRM OBJ(ERPLXF/IIM) OBJTYPE(*FILE) and see this:
Save Save
Object Library Type Date Time Volume
IIM ERPLXF *FILE 3/07/12 17:06:44 BR0222
IIM ERPLXF *FILE 6/06/12 20:04:20 BR0244
IIM ERPLXF *FILE 9/06/12 6:24:55 BR0032
IIM ERPLXF *FILE 12/03/12 17:38:53 BR0059
IIM ERPLXF *FILE 12/05/12 20:45:13 BR0017
IIM ERPLXF *FILE 12/10/12 17:38:28 BR0063
IIM ERPLXF *FILE 12/17/12 17:38:04 BR0041
IIM ERPLXF *FILE 12/18/12 17:38:29 BR0005
IIM ERPLXF *FILE 12/19/12 17:35:44 BR0036
IIM ERPLXF *FILE 12/20/12 17:38:36 BR0023
more...
We save our entire system quarterly and daily. quarterly tapes are
retained about a year. You guess how long daily tapes are retained. BRMS
keeps track of the retention and will ask you to contact Iron Mountain and
get the expired tapes back.

BRMS keeps track of a lot.

BRMS also generates a report that makes it easy to restore your system
from a total disaster. Let's say you do a full system save once a month.
And you do libraries weekly. And you do SAVCHGOBJ nightly. BRMS will
layout step by step how to do your restore, when to stick in what tape
volumes and so on to complete your restore. I send this report daily, as
a PDF file, to several off premises servers.

With this I no longer have to name my tapes according to my standards. If
my daily save starts filling up one tape and going on to two I don't have
to label the new tapes something special.

I fought BRMS tooth and nail. We had our own unique backup program with a
LOT of custom programming. But once we went to Mimix and decided to back
up on our Mimix machine it seemed like the time to switch over to BRMS. So
far the Kool-Aid tastes pretty good.

Just having BRMS on your system, which requires ss1-xx-Media and storage
extensions, will start generating the messages you've noted. There is no
'cheating the system'.

For more explanation and a step-by-step set up of BRMS:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v7r1m0/topic/brms/sc41534502.htm



Rob Berendt