Create the Remote Queue Files

90.45Create the remote queue files

New installations

If you intend to use the ABR Remote Queues for ABR operations, you must allocate, catalog and initialize the Remote Queue data sets.

Existing installations

You will use your existing Remote Queue data sets; skip to the next section. However, you can use these instructions if you are just starting to use the Remote Queues.

The Remote Queue data sets

There are four possible Remote Queue data sets. Which of them you need to allocate depends on what functions you intend to let end users request via the Remote Queues and on the setting of the DISKUPDT option (see ABR-Options and DISKUPDT in Set-FDR-Dialog-Global-Options).

Important

DISKUPDATE=YES requires that TSO be configured to allow users to execute the ABR Remote Queue utility (FDRABRUT) as an authorized program (see Authorize-the-FDR-Programs) when requesting a remote queue backup or archive; if this is not possible or desirable, you must use the data sets as shown below.

The data set names of the Remote Queue data sets are contained in the FDR Global Options and are set on panel A.I.4.5 (see Panel A.I.4.5 – Set FDR Global Data Set Name Options in ABR-Options). The data sets are used for:

ARCHIVE DUMP Remote Queue requests, if the DISKUPDATE option is set to “NO” (if DISKUPDATE is “YES”, this data set is not used). One index level of the name (other than the first) must be “ABRARDQ” unless the DSNCK option (on panel A.I.4.5) has been set to “NO”.
ARCHIVE RESTORE Remote Queue requests. One index level of the name (other than the first) must be “ABRARCH” unless the DSNCK option has been set to “NO”.
BACKUP DUMP Remote Queue requests, if the DISKUPDATE option is set to “NO” (if DISKUPDATE is “YES”, this data set is not used). One index level of the name (other than the first) must be “ABRBKDQ” unless the DSNCK option has been set to “NO”.
BACKUP RESTORE Remote Queue requests. One index level of the name (other than the first) must be “ABRREST” unless the DSNCK option has been set to “NO”.

Use of the Remote Queue data sets

The ISPF ABR dialogs (and direct execution of the Remote Queue Utility, FDRABRUT) dynamically allocate the proper Remote Queue data set for each request and adds an ABR control statement to the end of the data set (the dialogs and utility can also be used to view, change, and delete requests from the queues).

However, the queues are meaningless unless you have created ABR jobs which are run by the data center (or Operations, or whatever central group is appropriate) which process these remote queues. The queues are processed by ABR jobs if an appropriate DD statement name is added to an ABR step (see the JCL descriptions in FDRABR-Volume-Backups and FDRABR-Archiving-and-Superscratch).

The DD statements for the ARCHIVE DUMP and BACKUP DUMP Remote Queues can simply be added to your regular ARCHIVE and Incremental Backup ABR jobs, to automatically include the data sets requested by the end users. However, you must be sure that the jobs will process the volumes where the requested data sets reside (perhaps by use of the ONLVOL option of ABR).

You will probably have to create special ABR restore jobs to process the two RESTORE Remote Queues. The ARCHIVE RESTORE queue is the mostly likely to be used, and users will probably expect their data sets to be restored within a few hours (a day at the most) so you will need to execute the ARCHIVE Restore job at regular intervals.

Allocating the Remote Queue data sets

The Remote Queue data sets should be allocated with a few tracks primary space and one-track secondary with the following characteristics: RECFM=FB, LRECL=80, BLKSIZE=80, DSORG=PS. Sample member REMOTEDS in the Installation Control Library (ICL) contains JCL to allocate and initialize the remote queue data sets.

To allocate them manually, initialize each of the remote queue data sets with an end-of-file record, for example by issuing the following TSO command:

REPRO IDS('NULLFILE') ODS('remote-queue-dsname')