TAADISRCV Disaster Recovery Considerations

Disaster Recovery
** Consider printing this information and including it in your Disaster Recovery procedures. ** Consider making changes to your Disaster Recovery procedures based on the information in this document. General comments ---------------- You should be aware of the following: ** The TAA Productivity Tools are licensed to a unique serial number system. You cannot run the tools unless you have a proper software key. A special command CRTGRCKEY (Create Grace Key) is supported to allow a grace period use. See the later discussion. ** Most of the tools that allow you to enter data provide a CRT command that will create files in libraries other than TAATOOL or TAASECURE. There are a few objects in TAATOOL and TAASECURE that will contain your data and therefore these libraries should be backed up regularly. See the discussion of 'Backup' on the HELPTAA menu. ** The TAAxxx Authorization lists in QSYS are also part of the TAA Productivity Tools product. These must exist on the system you intend to run on and must be on the system before you restore the TAATOOL library. SAVSECDTA or SAVSYS saves Authorization List data and RSTUSRPRF along with RSTAUT restores the security structure correctly. There is nothing unique about the TAAxxx Authorization lists. If you are properly restoring security from one system to another, the TAA Authorization Lists will be handled properly. ** There may be other libraries associated with specific tools that you have created on your system. For example, the SPLARC tool requires that a library be named to contain the files used by the spool archive. It is assumed that you will save and restore these libraries as normal user data. Restoring to the same system ---------------------------- If you initialize the disks, all information is cleared. It is not necessary nor desirable to re-install the TAA Productivity Tools from the shipped tape because there are objects that are designed to contain your data in the TAATOOL and TAASECURE libraries. You would lose your changes if you re-installed the product on an initialized system. You must first restore the system from SAVSYS media. Running RSTUSRPRF and RSTAUT will restore the required TAA Authorization Lists. The TAATOOL and TAASECURE libraries should be restored normally from your backup. Since the license will still agree with your system serial number, no special action is needed for the software key. The TAAWORK library may contain work objects used by various tools. Only the library object need exist for a recovery. If a tool uses TAAWORK, a cleanup function is provided. If you use a daily SAVCHGOBJ approach to the TAATOOL and TAASECURE libraries and a periodic full library save of the same libraries, there should be few if any changes that need to be restored from the SAVCHGOBJ media after you have fully restored the libraries. The TAAWORK library does not have to be saved by SAVCHGOBJ and should probably be omitted as it may contain objects such as message queues which may be allocated to active jobs. There are TAA Productivity Tool functions that may assist you in the restore. See the later discussion. Restoring to a Different System that does not have a license ------------------------------------------------------------ Whether you are restoring for Disaster Recovery or testing your recovery procedure at a Hot Site or another one of your systems that does not have a TAA Tool license, you will not be able to run the TAA Tools on a different system serial number because of the unique software key. You will need a temporary license from the TAA Productivity Tools owner. Contact the owner when you need the software key for the temporary license. The temporary software key is entered with the CHGTAAKEY command. If you cannot contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner, see the later discussion of the CRTGRCKEY command. Before restoring any TAA libraries, you must ensure that the TAA Authorization Lists are on the new system. This would happen automatically if you did a restore of SAVSYS media and ran RSTUSRPRF and RSTAUT. You can restore the TAA libraries TAATOOL, TAASECURE, and TAAWORK libraries as part of the full restore of libraries. Before running any TAA Productivity Tool functions, you should use the CHGTAAKEY command and enter the software key provided by the TAA Productivity Tools owner. If you have not been provided with a software key, use CRTGRCKEY (see later discussion). Once the product is restored, you may use any of the TAA Productivity Tools to assist in your recovery. See the later discussion. Restoring to a Different System that has a license -------------------------------------------------- A typical scenario would be where you are restoring one or more applications to another one of your systems that already has a TAA Productivity Tools license. For this discussion, the term 'production system' will be used for the system which has had the disaster and 'backup system' will be used for your other system. In this case, the typical solution would be to leave the TAATOOL, TAASECURE, and TAAWORK libraries as they are on the backup system and just restore the application libraries from the production system. Depending on which tools you are using, there may be operational differences because of how you have specified various attributes that impact objects kept on both systems. For example: ** You may have authorized a user to a TAAxxx Authorization List on the production system, but not on the backup system. ** You may be using the ADPMBR tool on the production system which requires that files be specified in the ADPMBR data area in TAASECURE. The same entries need to be made on the backup system. Periodic testing of your application on the backup system always makes sense and should resolve any minor differences with the TAA Productivity Tools. In some situations, it may make sense to save the backup system, initialize it, and then restore the entire production system. In this case, the license information will differ after the restore because the production version is now on the backup system. This scenario is now the same as the previous section 'Restoring to a different system that does not have a license' and you should contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner for a temporary software key. If you cannot contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner, you can grant your system a grace key with the CRTGRCKEY command. Create Grace Key (CRTGRCKEY) Tool --------------------------------- The Create Grace Key Command is designed for situations where you cannot contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner, but need to operate for a few days (a grace period) on a system that does not have a license for the product. If you restore the TAATOOL library to a system which has a different serial number and attempt to run a TAATOOL, you will probably see a message that describes the situation. The message itself suggests the use of CRTGRCKEY if you are operating in a disaster recovery situation. You should not use CRTGRCKEY if you can contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner for a more permanent key. To use CRTGRCKEY you must have *ALLOBJ authority. You would enter the command (there are no parameters): CRTGRCKEY If the request is allowed, a prompt will appear that allows you to confirm the request. If a 'grace period' is granted, the period lasts until the system date changes 7 times. On the seventh change, the license is considered invalid and you must contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner for a valid key. CRTGRCKEY may only be used once on a system. You must receive a new tape (a release or update) from the TAA Productivity Tools owner before you can re-use CRTGRCKEY. Capture Network Attributes (CAPNETA) Tool ----------------------------------------- The Capture Network Attributes command captures the current setting of the Network Attributes and places them in a data area in TAASECURE. The RTNNETA command, returns the network attributes. Depending on which system you are recovering on, RTNNETA may be helpful, but you must do a regular CAPNETA to capture the data. Before saving TAASECURE, you could do a CAPNETA. Convert System Values (CVTSYSVAL) Tool -------------------------------------- The Convert System Values tool allows you to capture the current System Values and place them in a file. You can restore them with the RPLSYSVAL command. See the description of these tools. Convert Reply List (CVTRPYLE) Tool ---------------------------------- The Convert Reply List tool allows you to capture the current System Reply List entries and place them in a file. You can restore them with the RPLRPYLE command. See the description of these tools. Early Restore of TAATOOL and TAASECURE Libraries ------------------------------------------------ Because the TAA Productivity Tools can be used to help in a Disaster Recovery, some users will want to save and restore the TAA Tool libraries as if they were part of SAVLIB LIB(*IBM). See the discussion of the SAVTAATOOL tool in the 'Backup considerations' option on the HELPTAA menu or the SAVTAATOOL tool documentation. If you use SAVTAATOOL, you should consider printing the documentation for the tool and including it in your disaster recovery plan. TAA Productivity Tools Useful in a Total Restore ------------------------------------------------ Only a few significant TAA Tools will be described: ** RSTALLLIB. Restores all libraries on a tape. If you use an approach other than LIB(*xxx) on SAVLIB, the RSTLIB command supports only a single library. Note that you can use RSTALLLIB on a LIB(*xxx) tape by specifying SEQNBR(2) which bypasses the first file on the tape (the file contains a list of libraries that are saved to the media). RSTALLLIB will bypass the TAATOOL library because the program that is running the function is in TAATOOL. RSTALLLIB also supports the ENDSEQNBR parameter. Thus if you have multiple tape devices and a high speed CPU, you can have multiple restore operations in process at the same time. Restoring system libraries with RSTLIB LIB(*IBM) requires the system be in the restricted state. While the Operating System retains this restriction, some users have successfully restored system libraries using RSTALLLIB. You may use RSTALLLIB for system libraries at your own risk. There are no known problems. ** RSTMNYLIB. Similar to RSTLIB, but you can name a list of libraries. This is helpful when you know the libraries that are on the tape and only want to restore some of them. ** RSTALLCHG. This is similar to RSTALLLIB except that it works with the output of SAVCHGOBJ and allows all libraries on the tape to be restored. RSTALLCHG will bypass the TAATOOL library because the program that is running the function is in TAATOOL. ** RSTMNYCHG. Similar to RSTALLCHG, but you can name a list of libraries. This is helpful when you know the libraries that are on the tape and only want to restore some of them. ** CAPNETA. See the previous discussion. ** CVTSYSVAL. See the previous discussion. ** CVTRPYLE. See the previous discussion. ** CHKSAVRST. The Check Save/Restore command can assist you in looking at the job log messages generated by Save/Restore commands. ** DSPSAVTAP. Simplified form of DSPTAP so that you do not have to remember to enter the parameter DATA(*SAVRST). TAA Productivity Tools Useful in Saving a System ------------------------------------------------ Only a few significant TAA Tools will be described: ** CHKSAVDEV. Sanity checks the save device and Save/Restore support. This is intended to be used at the beginning of a long backup process. ** CHKTAPRDY. Checks the tape(s) that is mounted for the proper serial number and optionally runs CHKSAVDEV. ** CHKSAVRST. The Check Save/Restore command can assist you in looking at the job log messages generated by Save/Restore commands. ** PRTSAVLBL. Prints labels for the save media used. ** PRTSAVSTS. Prints the media used to save the libraries. ** SAVALLCHG. Saves all changes from user libraries. Similar to SAVCHGOBJ LIB(*ALLUSR) with better output and more options. ** SAVCHG23. Designed to work in conjunction with a Save Option 21 to save the entire system. SAVCHG23 saves 1) System values, 2) Reply list entries, 3) Network Attributes, 4) Security data, 5) Configuration data, 6) Changes to objects in all user libraries 7) Changes to objects in system libraries that contain user data 8) Changes to DLO objects, and 8) Changes to IFS objects. The restricted state is not required. IASPs are not saved. ** CAPNETA. See the previous discussion. ** CHKSAVTAP. Sanity checks a tape to help ensure the tape can be read. ** SPLARC. Allows backup and recovery of spooled files.


Disaster Recovery
Consider printing this information and including it in your Disaster Recovery procedures. Consider making changes to your Disaster Recovery procedures based on the information in this document. General comments ---------------- You should be aware of the following: The TAA Productivity Tools are licensed to a unique serial number system. You cannot run the tools unless you have a proper software key. A special command CRTGRCKEY (Create Grace Key) is supported to allow a grace period use. See the later discussion. Most of the tools that allow you to enter data provide a CRT command that will create files in libraries other than TAATOOL or TAASECURE. There are a few objects in TAATOOL and TAASECURE that will contain your data and therefore these libraries should be backed up regularly. See the discussion of 'Backup' on the HELPTAA menu. The TAAxxx Authorization lists in QSYS are also part of the TAA Productivity Tools product. These must exist on the system you intend to run on and must be on the system before you restore the TAATOOL library. SAVSECDTA or SAVSYS saves Authorization List data and RSTUSRPRF along with RSTAUT restores the security structure correctly. There is nothing unique about the TAAxxx Authorization lists. If you are properly restoring security from one system to another, the TAA Authorization Lists will be handled properly. There may be other libraries associated with specific tools that you have created on your system. For example, the SPLARC tool requires that a library be named to contain the files used by the spool archive. It is assumed that you will save and restore these libraries as normal user data. Restoring to the same system ---------------------------- If you initialize the disks, all information is cleared. It is not necessary nor desirable to re-install the TAA Productivity Tools from the shipped tape because there are objects that are designed to contain your data in the TAATOOL and TAASECURE libraries. You would lose your changes if you re-installed the product on an initialized system. You must first restore the system from SAVSYS media. Running RSTUSRPRF and RSTAUT will restore the required TAA Authorization Lists. The TAATOOL and TAASECURE libraries should be restored normally from your backup. Since the license will still agree with your system serial number, no special action is needed for the software key. The TAAWORK library may contain work objects used by various tools. Only the library object need exist for a recovery. If a tool uses TAAWORK, a cleanup function is provided. If you use a daily SAVCHGOBJ approach to the TAATOOL and TAASECURE libraries and a periodic full library save of the same libraries, there should be few if any changes that need to be restored from the SAVCHGOBJ media after you have fully restored the libraries. The TAAWORK library does not have to be saved by SAVCHGOBJ and should probably be omitted as it may contain objects such as message queues which may be allocated to active jobs. There are TAA Productivity Tool functions that may assist you in the restore. See the later discussion. Restoring to a Different System that does not have a license ------------------------------------------------------------ Whether you are restoring for Disaster Recovery or testing your recovery procedure at a Hot Site or another one of your systems that does not have a TAA Tool license, you will not be able to run the TAA Tools on a different system serial number because of the unique software key. You will need a temporary license from the TAA Productivity Tools owner. Contact the owner when you need the software key for the temporary license. The temporary software key is entered with the CHGTAAKEY command. If you cannot contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner, see the later discussion of the CRTGRCKEY command. Before restoring any TAA libraries, you must ensure that the TAA Authorization Lists are on the new system. This would happen automatically if you did a restore of SAVSYS media and ran RSTUSRPRF and RSTAUT. You can restore the TAA libraries TAATOOL, TAASECURE, and TAAWORK libraries as part of the full restore of libraries. Before running any TAA Productivity Tool functions, you should use the CHGTAAKEY command and enter the software key provided by the TAA Productivity Tools owner. If you have not been provided with a software key, use CRTGRCKEY (see later discussion). Once the product is restored, you may use any of the TAA Productivity Tools to assist in your recovery. See the later discussion. Restoring to a Different System that has a license -------------------------------------------------- A typical scenario would be where you are restoring one or more applications to another one of your systems that already has a TAA Productivity Tools license. For this discussion, the term 'production system' will be used for the system which has had the disaster and 'backup system' will be used for your other system. In this case, the typical solution would be to leave the TAATOOL, TAASECURE, and TAAWORK libraries as they are on the backup system and just restore the application libraries from the production system. Depending on which tools you are using, there may be operational differences because of how you have specified various attributes that impact objects kept on both systems. For example: You may have authorized a user to a TAAxxx Authorization List on the production system, but not on the backup system. You may be using the ADPMBR tool on the production system which requires that files be specified in the ADPMBR data area in TAASECURE. The same entries need to be made on the backup system. Periodic testing of your application on the backup system always makes sense and should resolve any minor differences with the TAA Productivity Tools. In some situations, it may make sense to save the backup system, initialize it, and then restore the entire production system. In this case, the license information will differ after the restore because the production version is now on the backup system. This scenario is now the same as the previous section 'Restoring to a different system that does not have a license' and you should contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner for a temporary software key. If you cannot contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner, you can grant your system a grace key with the CRTGRCKEY command. Create Grace Key (CRTGRCKEY) Tool --------------------------------- The Create Grace Key Command is designed for situations where you cannot contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner, but need to operate for a few days (a grace period) on a system that does not have a license for the product. If you restore the TAATOOL library to a system which has a different serial number and attempt to run a TAATOOL, you will probably see a message that describes the situation. The message itself suggests the use of CRTGRCKEY if you are operating in a disaster recovery situation. You should not use CRTGRCKEY if you can contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner for a more permanent key. To use CRTGRCKEY you must have ALLOBJ authority. You would enter the command (there are no parameters): CRTGRCKEY If the request is allowed, a prompt will appear that allows you to confirm the request. If a 'grace period' is granted, the period lasts until the system date changes 7 times. On the seventh change, the license is considered invalid and you must contact the TAA Productivity Tools owner for a valid key. CRTGRCKEY may only be used once on a system. You must receive a new tape (a release or update) from the TAA Productivity Tools owner before you can re-use CRTGRCKEY. Capture Network Attributes (CAPNETA) Tool ----------------------------------------- The Capture Network Attributes command captures the current setting of the Network Attributes and places them in a data area in TAASECURE. The RTNNETA command, returns the network attributes. Depending on which system you are recovering on, RTNNETA may be helpful, but you must do a regular CAPNETA to capture the data. Before saving TAASECURE, you could do a CAPNETA. Convert System Values (CVTSYSVAL) Tool -------------------------------------- The Convert System Values tool allows you to capture the current System Values and place them in a file. You can restore them with the RPLSYSVAL command. See the description of these tools. Convert Reply List (CVTRPYLE) Tool ---------------------------------- The Convert Reply List tool allows you to capture the current System Reply List entries and place them in a file. You can restore them with the RPLRPYLE command. See the description of these tools. Early Restore of TAATOOL and TAASECURE Libraries ------------------------------------------------ Because the TAA Productivity Tools can be used to help in a Disaster Recovery, some users will want to save and restore the TAA Tool libraries as if they were part of SAVLIB LIB(IBM). See the discussion of the SAVTAATOOL tool in the 'Backup considerations' option on the HELPTAA menu or the SAVTAATOOL tool documentation. If you use SAVTAATOOL, you should consider printing the documentation for the tool and including it in your disaster recovery plan. TAA Productivity Tools Useful in a Total Restore ------------------------------------------------ Only a few significant TAA Tools will be described: ** RSTALLLIB. Restores all libraries on a tape. If you use an approach other than LIB(xxx) on SAVLIB, the RSTLIB command supports only a single library. Note that you can use RSTALLLIB on a LIB(xxx) tape by specifying SEQNBR(2) which bypasses the first file on the tape (the file contains a list of libraries that are saved to the media). RSTALLLIB will bypass the TAATOOL library because the program that is running the function is in TAATOOL. RSTALLLIB also supports the ENDSEQNBR parameter. Thus if you have multiple tape devices and a high speed CPU, you can have multiple restore operations in process at the same time. Restoring system libraries with RSTLIB LIB(IBM) requires the system be in the restricted state. While the Operating System retains this restriction, some users have successfully restored system libraries using RSTALLLIB. You may use RSTALLLIB for system libraries at your own risk. There are no known problems. * RSTMNYLIB. Similar to RSTLIB, but you can name a list of libraries. This is helpful when you know the libraries that are on the tape and only want to restore some of them. RSTALLCHG. This is similar to RSTALLLIB except that it works with the output of SAVCHGOBJ and allows all libraries on the tape to be restored. RSTALLCHG will bypass the TAATOOL library because the program that is running the function is in TAATOOL. RSTMNYCHG. Similar to RSTALLCHG, but you can name a list of libraries. This is helpful when you know the libraries that are on the tape and only want to restore some of them. CAPNETA. See the previous discussion. CVTSYSVAL. See the previous discussion. CVTRPYLE. See the previous discussion. CHKSAVRST. The Check Save/Restore command can assist you in looking at the job log messages generated by Save/Restore commands. ** DSPSAVTAP. Simplified form of DSPTAP so that you do not have to remember to enter the parameter DATA(SAVRST). TAA Productivity Tools Useful in Saving a System ------------------------------------------------ Only a few significant TAA Tools will be described: * CHKSAVDEV. Sanity checks the save device and Save/Restore support. This is intended to be used at the beginning of a long backup process. CHKTAPRDY. Checks the tape(s) that is mounted for the proper serial number and optionally runs CHKSAVDEV. CHKSAVRST. The Check Save/Restore command can assist you in looking at the job log messages generated by Save/Restore commands. PRTSAVLBL. Prints labels for the save media used. PRTSAVSTS. Prints the media used to save the libraries. ** SAVALLCHG. Saves all changes from user libraries. Similar to SAVCHGOBJ LIB(ALLUSR) with better output and more options. * SAVCHG23. Designed to work in conjunction with a Save Option 21 to save the entire system. SAVCHG23 saves 1) System values, 2) Reply list entries, 3) Network Attributes, 4) Security data, 5) Configuration data, 6) Changes to objects in all user libraries 7) Changes to objects in system libraries that contain user data 8) Changes to DLO objects, and 8) Changes to IFS objects. The restricted state is not required. IASPs are not saved. CAPNETA. See the previous discussion. CHKSAVTAP. Sanity checks a tape to help ensure the tape can be read. ** SPLARC. Allows backup and recovery of spooled files.

Added to TAA Productivity Tools April 1, 1995

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Last modified on October 10, 2008