AS/400 DR reports

[mntlfngrs]

Hi,
Just trying to find out how everyone using as/400 is archiving or vaulting their dr reports. I am told that 'everyone' prints them out and sends them with the off site vault. I can't believe that is true. Isn't anyone using an electronic solution???

Thanks,
Adam

"Be all and you'll be to end all.
Life can be a real ball.
State of mind!"

 

[leveyp]

dr report ?? please be more specific

 

[mntlfngrs]

This is the Disaster Recovery report that we generate daily. It is used with the backup tapes to recover the entire system in case of a disaster here at the data center. We have four systems that create daily backup tapes and reports. Each report is 20-40 pages so you can imaginge the volume of paper we go through. The reports and tapes are sent along with the Z/900 tapes to an off site data protection company. The Z/900 writes its DR report to the first tape of its daily vault so there is no paper report. There has to be a way that companies are dong as/400 DR without paper reports.

Is there a better forum for this question?

Thanks

"Be all and you'll be to end all.
Life can be a real ball.
State of mind!"

 

[leveyp]

Hi Adam,
Still not sure exactly which report you mean. Could be an AS/400 job log, a DSPTAP (Display Tape) listing, or a listing from bespoke program. Regardless of how it's generated if the result is an AS/400 spooled file you can use the CPYSPLF (Copy Spooled File) to copy the report to a database file. You could also use CPYTOPCD (Copy To PC Document) to convert the DB2 file to ASCII if you prefer.
If you use i-series Navigator you can convert the spooled file to pdf format

 

[as400pro]

I don't recall ever working for a company that printed out the results of a backup and kept it with the tapes as you can always display the tape at a future time to see what it contains.
We currently run an old TAA Tools command after our backup which generates a report but we don't print them out.


----------------------------------------

http://www.as400pro.com

"My agility dog is smarter than your honor student."

 

[mntlfngrs]

Thanks guys,
The reports are instructions for recovering the entire system from the ground up. It step you through the recovery proceedure starting with
step: recover licensed internal code and gives the command/option to use and the saved item needed and the volume it is on. Then step: recover operating system... and so on.

Do any of you guys perform AS/400 DR excercises? What documentation do you use for this?

I am not an AS/400 admin so I realy don't know the system well. Our admins are fairly new to as/400 and I am trying to provide them with an alternative to the paper reports. It just seems rediculous to me in this day and age to use 1/4 reem of paper a day for a report that hopefully does not get used besided DR excercises.

I don't know what form the reports are in before printingbut my hope is to be able to utilize the DVD/RW that is attached to the system for these reports. My hope is to have a blank loaded and the system auto writes the reports to it. When we ship the daily vault offsite we grab the disk and replace with a blank. Also possibly just FTP to a couple of locations including the off site data storage.


"Be all and you'll be to end all.
Life can be a real ball.
State of mind!"

 

[leveyp]

Still unclear as to the source and content of these 'reports' If they contain static text i.e instructions then copy to PC doc and then copy to CD or e-mail or whatever. For variable contents i.e what was included in last nights backup, then my previous suggestions apply.

 

[mntlfngrs]

I suppose it would help if I mentioned that I am speaking of BRMS. I see now that I neglected to mention that. Does that help with explaining what I am looking for?

Thanks Again.

"Be all and you'll be to end all.
Life can be a real ball.
State of mind!"

 

[sawedoff]

If you are using iSeries Access, then use iSeries Navigator to look at the outq containing the report, drag and drop it (to you r desktop, for example) and from there you can store it on CD if you want, or archive it on your PC.

Sawedoff

 

[BluemoonT]

I agree printing those reports daily is to much. What about once a month sending one of the reports off site with the back ups?

 

[flapeyre]

There are a bunch of tools you can get that will convert spool files to .PDF files. Use one and then get the AS/400 to e-mail the reports with SNDDST to some mailbox offsite where it can be archived.

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

I guess I don't totally understand. Does you DR report change daily that you have to print it out daily? Can't you just print one copy, then if it needs to be changed, you recycle the old one and print a new one?

As far as archiving digitally, there are many options. flapeyre covered a couple good ideas. One tool that creates PDF is SPLTOOL (

http://www.bvstools.com).

We use that and it is an excellent tool.

iSeriesCodePoet
iSeries Programmer/Lawson Software Administrator

http://www.koldark.net

 

[mntlfngrs]

Of the four systems that create a daily DR report it looks like all but one changes daily. The reports specifies volumes to be used for recovery. All the volumes listed in this one are in a weekly movement policy and therefore would only need to be updated on a weekly basis. The other three systems appear to have at least one specified volume that are on a daily rotation. I'm sure that they decided to just print all four reports daily to K.I.S.S.

Thanks for all your input. I'm sure we can use some of your suggestions to store these reports digitally rather than on paper.

Thanks,
Adam

"Be all and you'll be to end all.
Life can be a real ball.
State of mind!"