Automate Backups

Keeping correct data backups of any enterprise system is a critically important task for any system administrator. But are you saving the right kind of data and are you one hundred percent certain that your backup will work if you need to fully recover from a system meltdown?

Fortunately when it comes to IBMs AS/400 and iSeries system they have you covered with a whole suite of backup and recovery utilities for saving, restoring and compressing data. And better yet these features are built right into the operating system so you don't need any additional software.

First and foremost is option twenty-one off of the save menu of the operating system. This option will bring the AS/400 or iSeries down to restricted condition, save operating system data along with the licensed internal code, backup user profiles, device configurations and save all of your user data. In short it is a complete backup of the entire system that can be used to restore it back to the point in time the full system save was complete.

A full system save or "go save 21" as it is commonly referred to is an important backup, but it is also the most time consuming and it requires the system to be taken down into dedicated mode. Plus it requires you to be logged into the console, fortunately it is possible to write a small utility program using control language and a message queue as a trigger to run a full system save in an automated fashion. Plus this way you can also incorporate other cleanup tasks like reclaim storage, reclaim spool storage and applying program temporary fixes at the same time.

One area most administrators forget about is saving the Integrated File System or IFS. If you are using your system as a file server for network connected workstations or using other programs on the system itself that makes use of the IFS then you will want to make sure that you have some sort of save procedure for it. To save the IFS use the Save Documents Library Object or SAVDLO command.

Commonly for daily data backups the software vendor provides a way to provide for backing up important data and usually performing other cleanup tasks at the same time. If your ERP or other software has this feature built in you will want to make sure to make use of it or at least check with the vendor.

If your data backup and recovery needs are more frequent like on an hourly or several times a day basis then you are in luck. As part of the AS/400s operating system is the ability to journalize files allowing you to record every add, change and delete to any record that is part of a file. You can then backup these journals to tape and along with your regular data backup recover the data contained in the journal for a complete system backup. Following this method of backup allows you to bring your system data back to the time the journal was last saved off.

Finally be sure to verify your data backups! If you are saving data to magnetic tape media then you can use the Display Tape or DSPTAP command to print out a full list of all the object details stored on that tape. This details report can be especially handy for passing Sarbanes Oxley audits.