RE: IBM System Storage TS3100 Tape library; unnecessary tapeverification by restoring object?

Rob--

Well, yes, the month end tape is a 'cheat.' But a small one-- our daily backups do complete library saves, so in a 'real ' disaster we'd restore the production data from the daily backups instead of the month-end backups. Our month-end backups are just the daily tapes from the night of month ending.

And, yes, we've considered just saving the 'changed objects.' But just a few days into the week we've 'touched' just about every file anyway, and by the time the system figures out which objects have changed we can have the whole library saved.

We have some 'historical' tapes that we're keeping until the 'keep until' date arrives, but they were from a company we acquired, and we have no idea of the file names, file formats, what applications they're from, what programs might look at the data, or even what machine the stuff ran on! So I've tried to make the case that holds the month end tapes as complete a set of tapes as possible-- the SAVSYS and Save Option 22 from each system, the 'odd' backups of some libraries that only get a 100% 'clean' backup in restricted state, etc. My theory is that you can grab any month-end case and get a snapshot of everything as it existed at that point in time-- including OS, IBM program products, our source and object code, files, etc.


As far as testing to see if we can rebuild our systems from scratch, once you get to be 'so big,' the auditors start requiring things like that. And so do the stockholders, who like businesses that have a survival plan!


Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of rob@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2011 2:18 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: IBM System Storage TS3100 Tape library; unnecessary tapeverification by restoring object?

True. But I wonder about the "grab a month end backup". I wonder if they
test bringing that up to current using each day's backups?

We use BRMS. Each day it prints us off a report that says if we have to
do a complete restore we will need these volumes: X, Y, Z (assuming that X
was from our full system save and the others were in between). And then it
gives us the step by step instructions to restore our system back to a
running state. I pdf that report daily and distribute it to three pc
servers, two of which are in different countries.


Rob Berendt