Re: IFS save 21 vs. sav with chgperiod (no BRMS!)

Hello Jim,

thanks for showing your valid points.


Am 13.02.2025 um 15:42 schrieb Jim Hawkins <jhawkins@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:

As someone mentioned, you need to have a recovery strategy before you determine a backup strategy.

I have described my recovery strategy in my original post. What do you miss precisely?

I'm using the initially described procedure on my old 150 running V4R5. Of course, I'm not saving to image catalogs, but to physical tape. That served me well for since I have that machine: Over a decade now.

Without knowing your recovery objectives, it is difficult to make accurate decisions about your back up. Recovery objectives need to include: how fast you need to be restored, how much data can you afford to loose (you may need to journal), where is your recovery location and other considerations.

I'm very aware. I'm responsible for some corporate Linux servers, as well as some private ones. :-)

Test your recovery plan! The first time I was involved in a DR test, we successfully proved we could NOT recover out system.

I do regularly.

(The following is to avoid the why questions...) This what a previous gig. I don't recall the name of the product, but it was a security package that among other things had restrictions on changing passwords. There was a trigger on the program for changing passwords. When you perform a recovery, one of the first steps is to change the password for QSECOFR. However, with the trigger, it would not allow us to change the password. Without a QSECOFR password, we could not end the trigger. Catch-22. Once we resolved that issue, future DR tests went without a hitch.

Yuck, that's a really weird situation, yes.

As has been communicated the update history, may shorten your backup time, but it will dramatically increase your recovery time as you will need to have all of your tapes and load them sequentially in order to recover.

That's why I want to use it only at Save 21 time.

Incremental saves made sense when backup time exceeded allowed downtime windows, or destination capacity. I abandoned that idea almost two decades ago. Easier restore beats almost everything else.

One reason for me to do Save 21's frequently is old, and meanwhile deleted objects reappear upon restore. I like to have tidy systems.

:wq! PoC