Introduction to FDR and ABR Backup Maintenance

Once backups on tape or DASD have been created with FDR, FDRDSF, or FDRABR, you may need to do maintenance on those backups. This maintenance may be as simple as creating additional copies of FDR backups, or complex operations such as deleting obsolete FDRABR ARCHIVE backups.

Two utility programs are provided for backup maintenance:

  • FDRTCOPY can be used to copy any FDR or ABR backup, and also performs special maintenance functions on FDRABR backups. It is included even for sites licensed only for FDR.
  • FDRTSEL is used only with FDRABR; it automates copying and condensing of FDRABR backups.
Warning

Backups created by FDR, FDRDSF, SAR, and FDRABR are in a unique FDR format and cannot be correctly copied by programs other than FDRTCOPY and FDRTSEL. If you copy FDR-format backups with any other copy utility, such as the IBM utility IEBGENER, the copy may appear to be successful but any attempt to restore from the copied backup will fail. Similarly, programs that transmit files from one computer site to another will usually corrupt FDR backups. The FATSCOPY (another BMC product) can also copy FDR backup tapes. If you must copy FDR tapes with other copy or transmission utilities, please contact BMC Support for assistance.

Copying FDR backups

During an actual backup, one or two copies of the backup file can be created simultaneously. However, it may be more convenient to create the second copy at a later time, or you may want more than two copies. FDRTCOPY can do this.

All backups created by FDR, FDRDSF, FDRABR, or SAR have the same internal format. In its simplest usage, the FDRTCOPY utility can be used to make an exact copy of any FDR-format backup. FDRTCOPY can also be used to copy backups on DASD to tape, or vice versa.

While doing the copy, FDRTCOPY also validates the internal format of the backup, verifying the structure of the data blocks and also verifying that all data that is supposed to be on the tape is actually present and readable.

The data set names and locations of non ABR backups are totally under the user's control. The FDRTCOPY JCL for copying non ABR tapes must point to the input backup, and the name and location of the copy is also specified in the JCL.

Copying ABR backups

Backups created by FDRABR use special naming conventions. Those backups are recorded by FDRABR, in the ABR catalog for full-volume and incremental backups, and in the Archive Control File for ARCHIVE backups and application backups. The FDRTCOPY and FDRTSEL utilities have special support for copying FDRABR backups. They recognize the FDRABR backup data set names, can copy multiple backup files from an input backup, and update the appropriate ABR records to record the copies.

FDRTSEL automates the copy process, looking up the selected backups in the ABR catalog or Archive Control File and dynamically allocating the input backups.

FDRTCOPY can also be used to directly copy FDRABR backups, but the user must point, via JCL, to the backup file to be copied (or the first file on a backup tape). We recommend the use of FDRTSEL for most FDRABR backup copying.

ABR archive maintenance

FDRTSEL has other important functions for FDRABR ARCHIVE backups.

  • FDRTSEL automates the movement of expired (or about to expire) ARCHIVE backups on DASD to tape. This is a key step if you have structured your ARCHIVE jobs to place the first copy on DASD with a short term retention (for quick auto-recall) but want to move that copy to tape with a longer retention when it reaches its first expiration.
  • FDRTSEL can copy your existing ARCHIVE backup tapes and eliminate the backups of DASD data sets that have expired and are no longer needed. The output copy is significantly smaller than the original since it contains only the remaining active DASD data sets, and frees up tapes in your library.
  • FDRTSEL may be used for migration from one type of tape to another, such as 3590 to IBM T1130. Since the newer tapes hold much more data on a volume, this can also greatly reduce the number of tape volumes required to hold your archival data.

 

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