Finding information of last Full system save

For Auditing and for disaster recovery it is useful, to have information of the last Full system save. Usually, across the industry, it is a best practice to store the Backup information. Generally, the tape used for the backup and the backup type and whether it was a successful backup or not is recommended to be kept stored. Some, firms have soft copies of these information and some hard copy of the  information stored.

By keeping these information, it makes things easier at the time of disaster. Lets now look at the native SAVE operations that is available with OS400. IBM provides many useful data area that save the important information of the last Full system save.

* QSAVSYS :- This data area saves information of the last SAVSYS command run.

* QSAVCFG :- This data area saves information of the last save on Configuration objects and the system resource objects.

*QSAVUSRPRF :- This data area saves information of the last save of all user profile in the system

*QSAVIBM :- This data area saves information of the last save on  IBM libraries or system libraries that starts with Q.

*QSAVALLUSR :- The data area saves information of all the last SAVLIB with *ALLUSR was run. It saves information of User libraries and also the Q libraries that are not considered system libraries such as QGPL, QPFR etc.

*QSAVLIBALL :- This data area saves information of the last SAVLIB with *NONSYS was run, which saves all the user libraries, QGPL and QUSRSYS.

*QSAVSTG :- This data area saves information of the last SAVSTG was run, this stores information of License internal code and content of auxiliary storage.

However, if you try to read the information on these data areas by the normal DSPDTAARA it would appear blank.

You can get the list of QSAV data areas by the following command,

WRKOBJ OBJ(QSYS/QSAV*) OBJTYPE(*DTAARA)

To get information about the last save system,

DSPOBJD OBJ(QSYS/QSAVSYS) OBJTYPE(*DTAARA) DETAIL(*FULL)
 Page down to the bottom,

Here, you can get the date and time when the last full system save was taken. The Tape used and the command that was run. 

Option 21 Full system Save

The OS400 provides SAVE menu to take backup. As we have already seen in previous post, this menu helps in taking specific backups like libraries or objects. To take a Full system Save using this IBM native menu, the option is OPTION 21, for Full System Save. Therefore, it is often known as OPTION 21 Backup.

Now, lets explore this in detail,

From command line enter command GO SAVE.

Page Down to option 21 Entire System.

Take Option 21, now the below screen appears.

Enter to continue.

Specify the device name and other options as per the requirement. Page down .

Introduction to Backup

Overview

As with all computer systems, your work on the i5 should be backed up periodically so that you can recover lost data.

Losing data is disastrous if you don't have a backup of everything you could possibly lose.

Initializing

You need to prepare the tape or diskette before you back up anything to tape or diskette. This process is called initialization.

Initializing Tapes
INZTAP

F4

Backing Up

Backing up is a very important part of daily operations. The i5/OS has a different save command for each type of saving operation. 

Always remember to:

You have enough initialized tapes.

Give *SAVSYS special authority to those users who need to perform any kind of save or restore operation.

Saving Libraries 

SAVLIB LIB(XYZ) DEV(TAP01) 

Saving Objects

SAVOBJ OBJ(ABC) LIB(XYZ) DEV(TAP01) OBJTYPE(*FILE) OUTPUT(*PRINT)

Below, screen describes the various commands under GO SAVE menu, these can be individually used to save specific objects in OS400.

Using Save Files

To use a save file instead of tape, you must create the save file first.

CRTSAVF FILE(MYLIB/MYSAVF) TEXT('Save file for backups') 

To save to the save file, execute the usual save command, except specify DEV(*SAVF) and the name of the save file in the SAVF parameter.

SAVLIB LIB(ACCTG) DEV(*SAVF) SAVF(MYLIB/MYSAVF) 

This command saves the entire ACCTG library in save file MYSAVF in library MYLIB.

Entire System Backup

Step 1 : Hold All Job Schedule Programs

Step 2 : ENDSBS *ALL ( *IMMED)

Step 3 : WRKSBS ( Display Active Subsystem ) 

Check if all subsystem have ended .

Step 4 : WRKACTJOB ( Display Active Job )

Check if any job is active .

Step 5 : GO SAVE ( F4 ) ( For Backup )

Take Option 21 for Full system save.

Implementing BACKUP in AS400 using native AS400 OS backup system

Now a days, BRMS (Backup Recovery Media Services) is more widely used and recommended software that is being used for backup management. However, I am going to first describe the Native Backup management system that AS400 OS provides and how this can be configured and managed to take up backup successfully for Daily, Weekly, Monthly etc. Lets now describe the feature and how to setup backup using this,

The AS/400 backup program is native to the AS/400 operating system.  It can be accessed from a command line by typing go backup.  Follow the procedures below to implement a backup job.

Daily Backup

·         Option 10 to Set a backup

·         Option 1 to Change daily backup options

·         TAP01 for Backup device

·         *ANY for Tape sets to rotate

·         Y to Erase tape before backup

·         1 (selected from list) for User libraries

·         3 (none) for Folders

·         3 (none) for User directories

·         N for Security data

·         N for Configuration

·         N for Save changed objects only

·         Y for Submit backup as batch job

·         Y for Print detailed report

Press enter will schedule the job on the job scheduler. 

Weekly Backup

·         Option 10 to Set a backup

·         Option 2 to Change weekly backup options

·         TAP01 for Backup device

·         *ANY for Tape sets to rotate

·         Y to Erase tape before backup

·         1 (selected from list) for User libraries

·         3 (none) for Folders

·         3 (none) for User directories

·         Y for Security data

·         Y for Configuration

·         N for Save changed objects only

·         Y for Submit backup as batch job

·         Y for Print detailed report

Press enter will schedule the job on the job scheduler. 

Monthly Backup

These options are not used.

Quarterly Backup

·         Enter go save from a command line

·         Option 21 for Entire system

·         Use defaults except for N for Active files and *NOTIFY for Message queue delivery

·         Use defaults to end subsystems

·         Use defaults for save system, save library, save document library, and save object

Backup Libraries

·         Option 10 to Set a backup

·         Option 10 to Change library backup list

·         Option 2 to select libraries to back up and then select option 1 (daily, weekly, monthly), option 2 (weekly and monthly), option 3 (weekly and monthly), or option 4 (no backup)

Backup Folders

Folders are not backed up on the AS/400 except for quarterly backups.

Backup Schedule

·         Option 20 to Change backup schedule

·         Y to Run backups using this schedule

·         Enter type of backup and time with appropriate day

·         Leave blank Occurrence of day in month to run monthly backup

·         *NOMSG for Hours before backup to send load tape message

Press enter to schedule the backup jobs according to this schedule.

Backup Job Names

From a command line, enter wrkjobscde to access the job scheduler. You can use this to schedule the backups, the job names for the same are as below.

·         QEZBKTMMON

·         QEZBKTMTUE

·         QEZBKTMWED

·         QEZBKTMTHU

·         QEZBKTMFRI

·         QEZBKTMSAT

·         QEZBKTMSUN