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IAM/AIX, a cost option to IAM, is
now available. This brings IAM’s outstanding
performance and data compression to those VSAM files that previously could
not be converted to IAM because they had alternate indexes. As with standard
IAM support there are no changes required to application programs!
- IAM/AIX uses 20% to 50% less CPU Time than VSAM.
- IAM/AIX performs 50% to 80% fewer EXCPs than VSAM.
- IAM/AIX runs in 50% to 80% less Elapsed Time than VSAM.
FATSCOPY, a cost option to FATAR (available 4th quarter 2000), will automate
the migration and stacking of datasets onto higher density tapes like IBM MAGSTAR
and StorageTek 9840 tapes. You can specify the datasets by:
- Data set name prefixes or masks
- Tape volume serial prefixes or ranges
- Tape device type (Ex: Migrating from 3480 to 3490)
Upstream OS/390 UNIX 3.1.2 provides a significant improvement in elapsed time
for incremental backup of OS/390 unix.FDR can provide dump and restore of entire
OS/390 UNIX file systems while UPSTREAM OS/390 UNIX allows you to do full and
incremental backups of individual files.
In addition UPSTREAM OS/390 UNIX supports External Links, Symbolic Links, Hard
Links, Auditing flags, HFS Extended Attributes, UNIX owners and permissions,
and Case sensitivity.
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bulletins via E-mail. You can subscribe to this mailing list
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The following versions are the levels required for OS/390 support within the
Innovation products. Check http://www.innovationdp.fdr.com/osreq.cfm for
updates to this page, and for additional considerations.
Use Innovation’s new and improved website for latest software
updates and product info.
FDRDRP enhances FDRABR Volume recovery
As you begin to replace older 3480/3490E tape drives with IBM 3590 Magstar
and StorageTek 9840 cartridge drives, you need to review your disaster recovery
procedures. These high-capacity cartridges can hold the incremental backups
of hundreds of disk volumes. Although this greatly reduces the number of cartridges
that must be carried to the disaster site, it also means that access to those
cartridges can become a bottleneck during the restore process. The same cartridges
will be needed over and over during the restore of your disk volumes.FDRDRP
(Disaster/Recovery Product) enhances the ABR volume restore process so that
the disk volumes backed up on those high-capacity tapes can be restored in
one pass of each tape. This eliminates repeated mounts of the backup tapes
and greatly reduces the elapsed time of the disaster restores. Users have reported
that volume recovery time has been reduced by up to 80%, getting their systems
operational faster and giving them more test time during disaster tests.Without
FDRDRP, some users have felt that it was too time consuming to restore from
daily incremental backups, so they limited the disaster restores to just the
most recent full-volume backup or limited the number of incremental backups
that they would apply. Therefore, the restored data is not as current as it
could be. FDRDRP makes it practical to restore the most recent incremental
backups and recover the most current data available.
One user backed up 110 3390-3 volumes to StorageTek 9840 cartridges,
using 8 cartridges for his weekly full-volume backups and 4 cartridges
for one day’s
incremental backups. Tests with FDRDRP showed that he was able to restore all
of the 110 volumes using only the full-volume backups in just 2.5 hours using
8 tape drives, and that additionally restoring a days worth of incremental
backups added only 30 minutes to the restore.
The same user backed up 47 3390-9 volumes to 16 cartridges (disk data was already
heavily compressed) for the full-volume backup and 4 cartridges for the incremental
backup. Using 8 tape drives, he was able to restore all those volumes from
the full-volume backups and one incremental in 80 minutes!Because of the way
FDRDRP overlaps tape processing, restoring from additional days of incremental
backups would have added only a few minutes for each day to the restore time.
Virtual Tape Systems (VTS) come in hardware versions (from IBM,
StorageTek, and Sutmyn) and software versions (from Sterling/CA
and EMC) but they all work
roughly the same way. They look like real tapes to the operating system and
tape management systems, and have volume serials like any real tape, but in
reality, the virtual tape volumes are emulated on disk. Once a dataset has
been written to a tape volume, the volume can be “mounted” and read back without
any delay as long as it is still in the “disk cache”. Virtual tape volumes
eventually will be copied to real tapes but they must be staged back to the
disk cache before they can be read again. A hardware VTS connects to the tape
channel and its disk cache and real tapes are internal, while a software VTS
emulates tape hardware and uses standard OS/390 disks and tapes.A VTS can solve
the problem of inefficient use of high-capacity tapes such as IBM 3590 Magstar
and StorageTek 9840. Many virtual tape volumes will be written to one real
tape volume, automatically stacking data and improving tape utilization. Most
existing tape applications, including FDR, FDRDSF and FDRSOS backups, can benefit
from a VTS but installations considering a VTS need to determine whether backups
from products such as FDRABR and FDR/UPSTREAM are appropriate for a VTS:
- FDRABR and FDR/UPSTREAM already use high-capacity tapes
efficiently, automatically stacking multiple backups on
a single tape, so the tape utilization improvement of the
VTS may be unnecessary.
- Tapes created by FDRABR and FDR/UPSTREAM often need to
go to an offsite vault for disaster recovery. Some VTS
have the ability to create duplex or vaulted data, but
some do not.
- When a virtual tape is still in the disk cache of the
VTS, recall or restore from an ABR backup on a virtual
tape is very fast since no physical mount is required.
However, when the virtual tape is on a real tape, the entire
virtual tape volume must be restored to the disk cache
before any data on that virtual tape can be read. If a
virtual tape volume contains many backups, but you are
only restoring a few small datasets, the VTS may need to
move a great deal of virtual tape data back to the disk
cache before the restore can proceed.
- A VTS can be used for rapid auto-recall of datasets archived
by ABR so it can be a good alternative to the Archive COPY1
on disk, but you may want to run the ABR ARCHIVE job with
MAXFILES=1 (or a small number) to limit the number of disks
that ABR will archive to a given virtual tape volume and
improve the elapsed time of the recalls. However, if you
are creating a second copy of the archive data on real
tape for offsite storage, MAXFILE=1 may be inappropriate
since it will use too many real tapes (to avoid this, use
FDRTSEL to create the second copy).
- You can use SAR (Stand-Alone Restore)
to restore from full-volume backups in a hardware VTS;
the VTS documentation
will tell you how to “manually” mount virtual tape volumes.
You cannot use SAR to restore from a software VTS since
OS/390 must be up to use it.FATS functions (label, certify,
erase) do not apply to virtual tapes, but FATAR can be
used to copy data to and from virtual tape volumes.
IAM 7.0 is now available and introduces a cost option, IAM/AIX which will allow
you to convert VSAM files with alternate indexes to IAM files.Most OS/390 data
centers still make extensive use of KSDS and ESDS VSAM files. When these VSAM
files are converted to IAM you will see a significant benefit in Elapsed Time,
Space and System Resources.
- IAM/AIX uses 20% to 50% less CPU Time than VSAM.
- IAM/AIX performs 50% to 80% fewer EXCPs than VSAM.
- IAM/AIX runs in 50% to 80% less Elapsed Time than VSAM.
Extensive tests
have shown that IAM’s
file structure and software compression technique are significantly
faster than even VSAM’s hardware compression, while giving
comparable or better space reduction. IAM delivers superior
performance and better space savings while using less CPU
time.IAM Compared to VSAM using hardware compression, sequentially
reading an 11GB file without Alternate Indexes.Batch Performance:
IAM/AIX Compared to VSAM with Alternate Indexes.
You can easily identify the I/O activity of your VSAM files.
Use the IAMSMFVS program (Section 40 in the IAM manual) to identify
the most active and largest
VSAM files. In most cases these would be excellent candidates for conversion
from VSAM to IAM and IAM/AIX.IAM’s SIGNIFICANT REDUCTION IN SYSTEM RESOURCES
CAN ALLOW YOU TO POSTPONE CPU UPGRADES!
FDR INSTANTBACKUP Version 5.3 L50 is available and now provides
support for IBM’s 2105 ESS (SHARK) DASD with FLASHCOPY in addition
to the other hardware vendors above.Unlike DFSMSdss, FDR allows
you to back up the offline volume,
therefore allowing you to take non-disruptive backups of your data.FDR INSTANTBACKUP
in conjunction with the hardware features, allows you to take backups non-disruptively.FDR
V5.3 L50 is now available.
- FDR and ABR with IBM FLASHCOPY
on the IBM 2105 ESS “SHARK” disk
- ABR with Hitachi Data Systems SHADOWIMAGE
- EMC timefinder “differential split” and “instant split” which
will significantly improve the split function
- FDRREORG support for IAM/AIX
- FDR support for cataloging multi-volume data sets (up
to 59 disk volumes)
- ABR improvements when restoring archiving and auto-recall
of VSAM files with Alternate Indexes (AIX)
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