RE: Backup - revisited -- MIDRANGE-L

John

That won't get you much. You should use the Internet method.

www.iseries.ibm.com/support

gets you started, then follow the link to the real support page.

You will need to get an IBM ID - click on the link for Software Service Request. You will get another page - take the top link for Software Service Request - the one with the key next to it. You'll get something saying IBM ID required - there is a link there for IBM ID - take it and sign up.

Once signed up, you might have to connect your profile to a customer number or serial number - it's been a while so I'm not clear from here - follow your nose through the pages.

The advantage here is, you will be able to see all the history as entered by IBM support people - it is extremely complete.

HTH
Vern

-------------- Original message --------------
From: John McKee <jmmckee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

What I have, so far, is customer number and the 800 number for software
support.
Does that get me anything?

John McKee

Quoting vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx:

John should be able = if he has an IBM ID and knows his company's
customer number = get to the record of the PMR online and see the
entire history - seems the best source of information.

-------------- Original message --------------
From: "Ingvaldson, Scott"

Additional information from John:

When BBACKUP was used, ENDSBS OPTION(*IMMED) preceeded BBACKUP. The
commands used by BBACKUP are:

SAVSYS DEV(TAP35) ENDOPT(*LEAVE)
SAVLIB LIB(*NONSYS) DEV(TAP35) ENDOPT(*LEAVE) ACCPTH(*YES) SAVDLO
DLO(*ALL) DEV(TAP35) ENDOPT(*LEAVE) SAV DEV('/QSYS.LIB/TAP35.DEVD')
OBJ(('/*') ('/QSYS.LIB' *OMI
T) ('/QDLS' *OMIT) ('/QNTC' *OMIT)) ENDOPT(*UNLOAD) UPDHST(*
YES)

The SA attempted to restore from 820 (?) to 520. I was not present
when he did this. All he offered was that the metadata was not saved
by the above commands. I asked what was included in the metadata, and

got no answer. When I showed him a page from infocenter detailing the

processes used by option 21, he stated that *something* is different.

Stated that he had been on the phone with IBM for weeks.

Old box was v5r2 and new box is at v5r4. I have NO idea what was
loaded on the new box.

All of this is to do DR planning at some point. He even stated that
option 21 was also non functional. But he quickly moved on. This
makes absolutely no sense to me.

Does any of this help? Any additional information that I might be
able to dig upthat could be worthwhile?

Our mutual supervisor has asked me to contact IBM support for
clarification. I would dearly like the call to be worthwhile. But, I

already see that I am missing a considerable level of detail. For
starters, what did he do, on what kind of system.

John McKee

-----Original Message-----
From: Evan Harris [mailto:spanner@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2008 3:32 PM
To: 'Midrange Systems Technical Discussion'
Subject: RE: Backup - revisited

Hi John

As others have said it's hard to explain what happened without more
details, particularly without the details of the errors that resulted in
the call to IBM. I do agree with Pete's assessment that you may have an
SA that is a bit out of his depth.

That being said I have seen a situation where a recovery did not go as
expected. In this case the consensus by all the people involved was that
somehow the backup "was not right" due to strange errors encountered
during testing. This case also resulted in a call to IBM.

By working through the documented recovery process they were using I
discovered that the recovery was accomplished by first IPL-ing the
machine from optical media and then continuing with the install of LIC
from the optical media. Only when doing the option 21 to Recover the
system was the original system save tape being specified, the end result
being all sorts of weird errors, although the system appeared on the
surface to be operational.
The use of the optical media in the recovery was due to the tape drive
not being configured as an alt-IPL device.

The problem with the recovery - as many will have already realized - is
that the system was missing PTF's from the portion of the restore done
from the optical media. This resulted in all sorts of weird errors that
suggested that the save was somehow bad.

I don't know if this is your situation at all, but it sounds somewhat
similar. My suggestion is that you get someone who knows how to do a
recovery to run through your recovery process either with a system 21 or
with the HBOC save, or if necessary, with both. For instance IBM or an
independent consultant (sorry - I'm unavailable due to distance :)

Depending on how the HBOC saves were created or modified you may be able
to get HBOC to agree that if you find there is a problem with their
backup process that they will wear the cost of the "someone" to do the
investigation, otherwise your SA will have generated this for you.

I can say that if the save commands are being run then the best
explanation for your problems is in the restore process. This is almost
certainly the problem given that a save option 21 would not work.

Regards
Evan Harris

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John McKee
Sent: Wednesday, 3 September 2008 3:13 a.m.
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Backup - revisited

I apologize for not being able to continue the former thread. Don't
have access to that email.

Just had a rather testy meeting that included the system administrator.

What I learned does not make a lot of sense to me. Hopefully, somebody
can clarify this for me:

The SA attempted to restore a backup performed via HBOC BBACKUP command
to a bare system. The SAV commands used were SAVSYS, SAVLIB *NONSYS,
SAVDLO, and SAV. He said at the end, it failed. HBe spent several
weeks in contact with IBM and was told that the individual commands did
not include metadata, required to bring the system back.

When I asked him what that data included, he got defensive and hostile.
I did point out to the group a page from the infocenter indicating
exactly what was saved by GO SAVE option 21. The SA then volunteered
that even using GO SAVE
21
did not result in a functioning system, again due to missing metadata.

So, can anybody explain what is missing and how to fix it?

John McKee

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