Homogenous System Copy - 1.8Tb ECC 6.0 - ABAP - avoid tape?

[Former Member]

We've been performing homogenous system copies for the past 10 years with much success.

When we've had the disk space available, have been able to SAVLIB R3<SID>DATA to *SAVF & then restore from the *SAVF

Avoiding the use of our LTO3 tape for both the BACKUP & RESTORE PORTION cuts hours off the process.

Now with the R3<SID>DATA library hitting about 1.8Tb, the *SAVF hits the maximum size allowable of 1TB and we can no longer use that method.

Has anyone come up with a creative way to do this without tape?

We have an ECC 6.0 upgrade go-live for May'08 and will need to refresh the training <SID> (fully copy of PRD) weekly

The toolset capabilities in a SAN environment on other unmentioned platforms are much more robust where this can be achieved in minutes vs. 10 hrs (or more for both the backup & restore).

Thank you in advance

Doreen (a name from the past)

[jorgen_johansen · Accepted solution]

Hi Doreen,

if you run V5R4 then you can use a new function called "Virtual Tape". You use a virtual tape exactly as you would use a physical tape device, but what i5/OS does is actually a save to disk. Using virtual tape you can forget all limitations from savefiles, you can save multiple libraries, IFS object, configurationobjexts etc to same virtual tape and your only limitation is the diskspace available. Expect same save-performance as save to savefiles though....

Dont compare the 10 hours save on System i with 10 minutes flash copy... our SAN collegues dont actually copy the data

Jørgen

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thank you --- found documentation and copied below

Setting up virtual tape through 5250 emulation

Here are the basic commands for setting up virtual tape through 5250 emulation:

1. To create a virtual tape device:

CRTDEVTAP DEVD(TAPVRT01) RSRCNAME(*VRT)

2. To vary on the virtual tape device:

VRYCFG CFGOBJ(TAPVRT01) CFGTYPE(DEV) STATUS(ON)

3. To create a virtual tape image catalog:

CRTIMGCLG IMGCLG(backup) DIR('/images/tape/backup') TYPE(TAP) CRTDIR(YES)

4. To create virtual images in the image catalog:

ADDIMGCLGE IMGCLG(BACKUP) FROMFILE(*NEW) TOFILE(VOL001) VOLNAM(VOL001)

Repeat for as many volumes as needed.

5. To load the image catalog on to the virtual device:

LODIMGCLG IMGCLG(backup) DEV(TAPVRT01)

The virtual tape storage is ready for operation:

TAPVRT01 is used as the device (DEV) parameter.

[Former Member]

Hi Doreen,

It is a long time...

Would you consider creating two SAVFs? One to SAVLIB with omiting the largest tables, and the other one to SAVOBJ those tables.

If you have concern about the data consistence, ENGDG for Mimix and check the job status or messages to restart it. (I never tried it before, but I guess it would work.)

Best regards,

Victor