Save-while-active questions / concerns

["David A Parnin" <daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings everyone,

For our daily backups we have traditionally killed QINTER and another
subsystem or two, done the save's, then IPLed.  Awhile back I removed the
IPL and added code to restart what was shut down.  I am now getting ready
to implement save-while-active to reduce the downtime window even more.  I
don't have a problem with monitoring for when the checkpoint has been
established and restarting things but I do have a couple of questions.

How close to a restricted state does the system need to be to establish a
good checkpoint?  In the past even though QINTER was down there was still a
subsystem with some never-ending EDI jobs.  I assume that needs to be ended
to get a good checkpoint.  Perhaps a bigger concern is with ODBC jobs.  We
have a number of users that use Showcase queries.  They don't appear to
lock the files.  Should those be addressed?  I doubt that we've got anybody
using FPT or Telnet but should I end TCP/IP just to be safe?

I'm also concerned about the SAVACTWAIT parameter.  I want to avoid objects
being skipped.  Given that it has a 2 minute wait time per object if they
are in use this could add up if I happen to miss a couple of things.  In
case it matters we are at V5R1.  I was planning on using the *SYNCLIB
option.  I've read through the archives but didn't see these things
addressed.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Dave Parnin
Nishikawa Standard Company
Topeka, IN  46571
daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx