Re: DR Plan - Got one? Will it work?

[MacWheel99@xxxxxxx]

When we do a backup ... there is a message at the end either that the Save or 
Restore was successful, or some other message, in which the Computer Operator 
can see that we had a problem & we deal with it ... this is the reason that I 
never leave backup running unattended without checking on it before I leave 
the office for the evening, but when I am on vacation or at IBM school, my 
helpers are less religious ... I find evidence that there were problems with 
many backups from them not following my instructions properly ... I am 
tempted to say "Do not even bother to do a backup when Mac is not in town."

Now an important question is whether the IBM message that the backup was 
successful is a reliable message.

We all know that when BPCS jobs bomb, they send message to user that the job 
ended successfully, because OS/400 only recognizes that the program ended, 
not that it ended abnormally in BPCS terms.  May I presume that this is only 
true of application software by 3rd parties on IBM systems, not true for IBM 
jobs ... when an IBM job says it ended successfully, I have been trusting 
that is always a true statement.

Apparently a lot of sites have some kind of unattended backup, which may have 
some error messages regarding non-success of that backup, that are in a 
message queue that no one pays attention to, and even if they did, very few 
comprehend their meaning.  Is that a fair statement?

I have noticed with GO BACKUP that if a new library is added to our AS/400 
that it is automatically added to all backups until we get a round TUIT to 
review what belongs on what backups.  Thankyou IBM.

> From: sueu@alltel.net (Sue Underwood)
>  
>  Friends,
>  
>  Myself and others have spent the past 10 days or so assisting a company in 
>  recovering lost data from a failed AS/400.  Trust me, it wasn't fun.  Now 
>  the point is not that the 400 failed. (We all know that doesn't happen 
very 
>  often).  What's important is that the backup and recovery plan of this 
>  organization didn't work.  Some critical files could be recovered from the 
>  previous night's backup, but others had to be recovered from a SAVSYS that 
>  was almost 2 weeks old at the time of the crash.
>  
>  I don't wish to bore any of you with the details of the recovery, I just 
>  want you to think about your company and your plan.  Do you have a plan? 
>   Have you tested it?  Have you tried a 'hot site' recovery?  Are there 
>  manual procedures for the users while the system is unavailable?  The 
>  information tucked away in that pretty, black box is a company asset.  Are 
>  you doing all you can to protect it?
>  
>  Food for thought,
>  Sue

Al Macintyre  ©¿©
http://www.cen-elec.com MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor
When you want it cheap - you get what you paid for.
When in doubt, read the manual, assuming you can find the right one.
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