Managing table space incremental image copies

You can use the BMC AMI Copy FULL NO option to make an incremental image copy of a table space and then optionally merge that copy with the most recent incremental copy.

This enables you to reduce the number of copies you need to manage during a recovery. BMC AMI Copy merges copies according to copy type. (For example, a new local primary incremental copy is merged only with the prior local primary incremental copy.)

In certain situations, BMC AMI Copy does not allow you to make an incremental copy until a full image copy has been made; in some of those situations,

BMC AMI Copy automatically escalates your incremental copy request to a full copy request.

Important

For partitioned spaces, we recommend that you make your incremental copies with the same copy strategy as your full copies. If your full copies are by partition, make your incremental copies by partition and vice versa. Failure to do so might cause the incremental copies to escalate to full copies.

If you use the FULL AUTO option instead of FULL NO, or if you use the CHANGELIMIT option, BMC AMI Copy escalates your incremental copy request to a full copy when certain criteria that you specify are satisfied. See Escalating incremental copies to full copies.

Even though you choose to merge an incremental copy with the most recent prior copy, you can specify that the prior copy be kept, that is, not be deleted from the SYSIBM.SYSCOPY table. As a result, the prior copy will still be available if you need it later for a point-in-time recovery. BMC AMI Copy provides the RECALL command to allow you to reinstate an incremental copy that was merged but not deleted from SYSIBM.SYSCOPY.

BMC AMI Copyalso optionally allows you to:

Optimize the elapsed time required to make an incremental copy
Register empty incremental copies (that is, register an incremental copy even though no pages changed since the last copy)

To accomplish incremental copy tasks, BMC AMI Copy provides the following options for use with FULL NO, FULL AUTO, and CHANGELIMIT:

CUMULATIVE specifies whether to merge a requested incremental RESETMOD NO copy with the most recent prior incremental RESETMOD NO copy. See Merging incremental copies.
KEEP specifies whether to delete the entry for the most recent prior incremental RESETMOD NO copy from SYSIBM.SYSCOPY. See Keeping and recalling merged incremental copies.
READTYPE allows you to choose the most efficient I/O method of reading the table space. See Optimizing the elapsed time for an incremental copy.
EMPTY specifies whether to register an empty incremental copy. See Registering empty incremental copies.

This section contains the following topics:

Managing table space incremental image copies

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