Brms Workshop

AS/400 Technical Support AS/400 BRMS Workshop Manual

Author: Colin Bangay (AS/400 Technical Support)

Copyright  1999 IBM United Kingdom Ltd. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of IBM United Kingdom Limited.

AS/400 Technical Services AS/400 BRMS Workshop

Created by C.Bangay Page 1 of 57

AS400 BRMS WORKSHOP MANUAL INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 3 CONTROL GROUPS ................................................................................................................................. 4 HOW TO GET TO CONTROL GROUPS ............................................................................................ 4 DISPLAYING ATTRIBUTES OF CONTROL GROUP ...................................................................... 6 DISPLAYING A CONTROL GROUP .................................................................................................. 9 MEDIA POLICIES ....................................................................................................................................10 HOW TO VIEW A MEDIA POLICY ...................................................................................................10 MOVE POLICIES .....................................................................................................................................13 HOW TO VIEW A MOVE POLICY ....................................................................................................13 BACKUP POLICY ....................................................................................................................................16 HOW TO VIEW THE BACKUP POLICY ..........................................................................................16 SYSTEM POLICY ....................................................................................................................................20 HOW TO VIEW THE SYSTEM POLICY ...........................................................................................20 WRKMEDBRM – WORK WITH MEDIA USING BRM .........................................................................24 ADDING VOLUMES TO THE MEDIA INVENTORY .....................................................................25 REMOVING TAPES FROM THE MEDIA INVENTORY ................................................................28 DISPLAY EXPIRATION DATES, CREATION DATES,LOCATION AND MEDIA CLASS OF TAPE VOLUMES.................................................................................................................................31 CHANGE EXPIRATION DATES, CREATION DATES AND MEDIA CLASS OF TAPE VOLUMES ............................................................................................................................................33 CHANGE LOCATION OF TAPE VOLUMES ...................................................................................35 DISPLAY CONTENTS OF TAPES VOLUMES ................................................................................37 DISPLAY TAPE MEDIA SETS ..........................................................................................................41 DUPLICATE TAPES ...........................................................................................................................41 DISPLAY DUPLICATE TAPES .........................................................................................................41 REINITIALIZE TAPE VOLUMES .....................................................................................................41 MARK TAPE VOLUMES FOR LABEL PRINT ................................................................................41 MARK TAPE VOLUMES AS CLEANED...........................................................................................42 PRINT MEDIA REPORTS ..................................................................................................................42 WRKMEDIBRM – WORK WITH MEDIA INFORMATION USING BRM ...........................................43 RESTORING A LIBRARY/OBJECT USING WRKMEDIBRM ........................................................43 STORAGE LOCATIONS .........................................................................................................................50 SAVING LIBRARIES/OBJECTS .............................................................................................................51 STRBKUBRM .......................................................................................................................................51 SAVLIBBRM ........................................................................................................................................52 SAVOBJBRM .......................................................................................................................................53 SAVSAVFBRM ....................................................................................................................................54 SUMMARY ..............................................................................................................................................55



INTRODUCTION

This workshop was given during the week 19th April to 22nd April 1999. The purpose of the workshop was to give an overview of BRMS and how it works within the Cable and Wireless environment. The overview was given to both new AS/400 members of staff and experienced AS/400 members of staff, and was based on their relative knowledge of BRMS before the workshop was given. At the end of the workshop and with this documentation to hand, the AS/400 operators will be able to use BRMS to a high operational level. I have presented this workshop based also on the overnight ROBOT backups so the AS/400 operators were shown the ICMSCALL backup for the purpose of this overview.



CONTROL GROUPS Control Groups are used to back up either a single library, a group of related libraries, a set of objects or folders defined by a backup list or certain pre-defined components of the system such as configuration or security data. Control groups can also include special operations to execute an exit program. This program could send a message to operations to tell them that a backup is starting or completing, and we do use this for our backups through BRMS. A control group will also include instructions such as what media policy to use, what tape device to use, default weekly activity (whether to do full saves or incremental saves), whether to append to media, end of tape option. This is discussed in more detail in following topics. As part of the overnight batch run ROBOT backs up the ICMS production libraries. We will look at the ICMSCALL backup through BRMS throughout this overview as the default. HOW TO GET TO CONTROL GROUPS From a command line type: GO BRMS (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:



Select option 2. Backup (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

Select option 1. Backup planning (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:



Select option 1. Work with control groups (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

You will be presented with the ‘Work with Backup Control Groups screen’. DISPLAYING ATTRIBUTES OF CONTROL GROUP Follow instructions on how to get to control groups, then: Page down to find Control Group ICMSCALL as below:



You will notice that Control Group ICMSCALL has a media policy called ONEMONTH attached to it, and the weekly activity is FFFFFFF (This means that a full backup will be done Sunday to Saturday). The media policy is dealt with in following topics, so I will not cover it here but basically the media policy specifies how long to keep the cartridges and it also specifies what move policy to use (Again, the move policy will be discussed in following topics). Put an 8 (Change Attributes) against the Control Group ICMSCALL, as below:

Press enter and you will be presented with the following screen:



The ‘Change Backup Control Group Attributes’ screen is displayed. You will notice that the media policy is ONEMONTH, the backup device is TAPLIB02 (Which is used for the A/B machines) and the default weekly activity is FFFFFFF. If you now Page down you will see the following screen:

You will notice on this screen that Save access paths is set to *YES, Save contents of save files is set to *YES, End of tape option is set to *UNLOAD and Journaled objects is set to *YES. When the save is run using Control Group ICMSCALL all of the above will be used for the save, so if for some reason we wanted the save to be set to *LEAVE instead of *UNLOAD this is where you would make the change. You will also notice that there are a few options that are set to *BKUPCY, this means that it will use the Backup policy defaults for these specific options (Backup policy is discussed in more detail in following topics)



DISPLAYING A CONTROL GROUP Follow the instructions on how to get to control groups, then: Put a 5 (Display) against control group ICMSCALL (press enter)

You will be presented with this screen: The ‘Display Backup Control Group Entries’ screen shows you what is being backed up by this control group. As you can see we are backing up ICMSCALL. You will notice the *EXIT command both before and after ICMSCALL, this is where Technical Support set the messages that appear on QSYSOPR telling you that the save is starting and when it is completed. You will also note that Retain object detail is set to *YES, this means that when looking at the save through BRMS you can display all objects saved (This is covered in topic WRKMEDIBRM – Work with Media Information using BRMS).



MEDIA POLICIES Media policies are attached to control groups and define the type and length of Retention for data saved on media. It also references the Media class and Move Policy to be used for the save. HOW TO VIEW A MEDIA POLICY From a command line type: GO BRMS You will be presented with the following screen:



Select option 11. Policy administration (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

Select option 6. Work with media policies (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:



For the purpose of this workshop we will be using media policy ONEMONTH as that is what Control Group ICMSCALL uses. Page down to media policy ONEMONTH and put a 5 (Display) against it (enter). You will be presented with the following screen:

You will notice on this screen that the retention is in days, and there is a 31 day retention on this policy. The media class to be used is CART3590 and the storage location is TAPLIB02 (Which is the Automatic Tape Loader or ATL as it is called). This means that this media policy will use tapes of class CART3590 and will only use tapes from location TAPLIB02 for the saves. You will also notice that this media policy has a move policy ONEMONTH attached to it, this is discussed in more detail in following topics.



MOVE POLICIES Move policies are attached to media policies and basically the move policy tells the tapes where to go, for how long and when to come back onsite to expire. HOW TO VIEW A MOVE POLICY From a command line type: GO BRMS You will be presented with the following screen:




Select option 7. Work with move policies (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:



For the purpose of this workshop we will be using move policy ONEMONTH as that is what media policy ONEMONTH uses. Page down to move policy ONEMONTH and put a 5 (Display) against it (enter). You will be presented with the following screen:

You will notice that the home location says *SYSPCY (This is the System Policy and this is discussed in more detail in following topics). This policy will not use containers but will require verification as Verify moves is set to *YES. The move policy ONEMONTH will send the tapes used to location OFFSITE for 31 days (this will appear on the move verification screen for you to verify) and then will come back to location WARRINGTON to expire (again, you will need to verify this on the move verification screen).



BACKUP POLICY The backup policy has backup defaults specified so if a control group has specified *BKUPCY for Append to media it will look at the Backup policy to see what the default is set to and use it.

HOW TO VIEW THE BACKUP POLICY From a command line type: GO BRMS (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:




Select option 2. Backup policy (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:



Select option 1. Change backup policy (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

You will notice that Default weekly activity is FFFFFFF meaning a full save will be taken if *BKUPCY is specified in a control group for this option. You will also notice that some of the options have *SYSPCY against them, this means that they will take the system policy defaults for these options (System policy is covered in future topics)



If you page down one page you will be presented with the following screen:

You will notice the defaults for these options are set above, Save access paths is set to *YES, Save contents of save files is set to *YES, Append to media is set to *NO and End of tape option is set to *UNLOAD. Again, there are quite a few options that specify *SYSPCY as the default (System policy is covered in future topics)



SYSTEM POLICY The system policy is like a set of system values. Unless other controls are in effect, the system policy determines the default for all users. As you will have noticed, some of the defaults on the Backup policy are set to *SYSPCY, this means that the system policy defaults will be used. HOW TO VIEW THE SYSTEM POLICY From a command line type: GO BRMS (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:




Select option 1. System policy (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:



You will see that you have 9 options, the ones you are really interested in are 1 and 7. Select option 1. Change system policy (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

You will notice that the system default media policy is FULL (to look at this have a look at topic MEDIA POLICIES), the devices to be used are *MEDCLS (this will use any device that can be used for the specified media class ie: CART3590). The home location for media is WARRINGTON, the media class is CART3590, sign off interactive users is set to *NO and the default output queue is BRMSOUTQ in library QUSRSYS.



Now F3 out of this screen and back to the System Policy screen. Select option 7. Change IPL controls (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

This is where the IPL defaults are set, as you can see obviously the ‘IPL after process’ is set to *NO, the only control group where IPL is set to run is the SAVSYS control group which is set to IPL after backup *YES.



WRKMEDBRM – WORK WITH MEDIA USING BRM The WRKMEDBRM command can be used to: 

Add or remove tape volumes from the media inventory



Display/change expiration date of tape volumes



Display/change Creation date of tape volumes



Display/change location of tape volumes



Display/change Media Class of tape volumes



Display contents of tapes volumes



Display tape media sets



Duplicate tapes



Display duplicate tapes



Reinitialize tape volumes



Mark tape volumes for label print



Mark tape volumes as cleaned



Print media reports

All of the above is covered in the following subtopics.



ADDING VOLUMES TO THE MEDIA INVENTORY Enter the command: WRKMEDBRM (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

You will see the options above, 1=Add 2=Change etc….. To add a volume put a 1 under option and then under volume serial put the BRMS label number which you will have put on the cartridge (enter)



You will be presented with the following screen (we will create a cartridge with a BRMS label of 700000):

You need to put the media class in (ie: CART3590), number to add 1 (however, if you were adding volume 700000 to 700010 then you could put Number to add 10), Initialize tape should be changed to *YES. Press enter and you will be presented with the following screen (see next page):



You will notice more on screen options appear. You must put a Tape unit in (ie: whatever tape drive you are using like TAP02), check for active files change to *NO and normally you would put End of tape option *UNLOAD. Press enter and BRMS will add the volume to BRMS and initialize the tape as 700000 so it matches the external BRMS label.



REMOVING TAPES FROM THE MEDIA INVENTORY Enter the command: WRKMEDBRM (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

For the purpose of this workshop we will remove tape volume 700000. One thing to note is that you can only remove a tape volume that is expired and that is owned by the local machine (ie: You can only delete B machine tapes on the B machine) Next to Position to put 700000 as below (see next page)



Press enter and it will go straight to that tape volume number as below:



Put an option 4 (remove) next to tape volume 700000 and press enter: You will be presented with the following screen:

You are now on the Confirm Remove of Media Volume Serials screen, press enter to confirm and the volume is removed.



DISPLAY EXPIRATION DATES, CREATION DATES,LOCATION AND MEDIA CLASS OF TAPE VOLUMES Enter the command: WRKMEDBRM (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

Position to tape number 006000 (enter)



You will be presented with the following screen:

To display a tape, select option 5 (display) against tape 006000 (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

This displays all media attributes for this volume, you can see the expiration date, creation date, current location of tape as well as previous location and media class. That is how to display a tape, on the next page you will see how to change information on a tape like the expiration date, location or media class. AS/400 Technical Services AS/400 BRMS Workshop


CHANGE EXPIRATION DATES, CREATION DATES AND MEDIA CLASS OF TAPE VOLUMES Enter the command: WRKMEDBRM (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:





To change a tape, select option 2 (change) against tape 006000 (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

From this screen you can change the media class to whatever you need (ie: if doing a billing run change the tape to be media class @CYCLEDLY), the expiration date can be changed to whatever you may require, you can also change the move policy if you require. Once you have made your changes press enter and it will take effect. AS/400 Technical Services AS/400 BRMS Workshop


CHANGE LOCATION OF TAPE VOLUMES Enter the command: WRKMEDBRM (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:





To change the location of a tape (as you can see tape 006000 is currently offsite) select option 8 (Move) and press enter: You will be presented with the following screen:

Next to Storage location you can put the new location ie: WARRINGTON. Press enter and the change will take effect, the tape will now say it is in WARRINGTON, you will have to get the tape back from offsite to reflect this.



DISPLAY CONTENTS OF TAPES VOLUMES Enter the command: WRKMEDBRM (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:





Press F23 and you will get more options, as below:

Select option 13 (Display contents) against tape 006000 (enter)



You will be presented with the following screen after a few seconds:

Now press F11 (enter), you will be presented with the following screen:

You will see that libraries ICMSXMJRN and ICMSXMRCV have been saved, and that 6 objects and 32 objects have been saves respectively. The QUSRBRM save of 11 objects is saved every time a save is taken of anything through BRMS, it is the history of the save. You can also see that no objects were not saved, the control group used for the save is XMJOURNAL and most importantly object detail is set to *YES. AS/400 Technical Services AS/400 BRMS Workshop


Because the object detail is set to *YES, we can actually display the objects that have been saved. To do this select option 9 (Work with saved objects) against saved item ICMSXMJRN (enter). You will be presented with the following screen:

This is very good as you can now see what objects have been saved from library ICMSXMJRN.



DISPLAY TAPE MEDIA SETS I will be brief in reviewing this section as you will not use this often. From the WRKMEDBRM screen select option 6 against a cartridge with a + sign next to it and it will display the set of volumes associated with this cartridge, as well as the sequence of the set. DUPLICATE TAPES I will be brief in reviewing this section as you will not use this often. From the WRKMEDBRM screen select option 14 against the cartridge that you want to duplicate, press enter and it is exactly the same as a normal DUPTAP except you use BRMS carts to do it. You input the FROM device and the TO device. The BRMS cartridge you are copying to must be in BRMS and expired. DISPLAY DUPLICATE TAPES I will be brief in reviewing this section as you will not use this often. From the WRKMEDBRM screen select option 15 against a duplicated cartridge (you will know a duplicated cartridge because it will have a * under DUP STS on the far right of the WRKMEDBRM screen. This will tell you the original cartridge and the duplicated cartridge. REINITIALIZE TAPE VOLUMES I will be brief in reviewing this section as you will not use this often. From the WRKMEDBRM screen select option 10 to reinitialize a tape volume with the same volume id. This issues the INZTAPBRM command and can only be used on expired volumes.

MARK TAPE VOLUMES FOR LABEL PRINT We do not use this option so I will leave it alone. If you want more information on this subject call BRMS support and they will be happy to tell you.



MARK TAPE VOLUMES AS CLEANED I will be brief in reviewing this section as you will not use this often. From the WRKMEDBRM screen select option 12 against a tape volume. This will mark the volume as being cleaned and resets the error statistics for this volume. PRINT MEDIA REPORTS I will be brief in reviewing this section as you will not use this often. Many different reports can be produced with the WRKMEDBRM OUTPUT (*PRINT) command. Volume selection can be done based on the information recorded about a volume, including creation date range, expiration date range, location, container (which we do not use), media class, system name and text. This can be sorted by volume id, creation date, expiration date or location.



WRKMEDIBRM – WORK WITH MEDIA INFORMATION USING BRM You use the Work with Media Information (WRKMEDIBRM) command to create a report or display of media information, based on libraries, date ranges, and sequences that you specify. RESTORING A LIBRARY/OBJECT USING WRKMEDIBRM One of the great uses of this command is if you are asked to restore a library/object you can use this command to display all saves of that library and select the one you want to restore. So if a programmer wanted a library called ICMSCALL restored from 2 weeks ago you can actually find it within seconds using BRMS and it will tell you what tapes it was saved on so you know straight away what tape volumes to order onsite. From a command line type: WRKMEDIBRM (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

For Library put ICMSCALL, then press enter.



You will then be presented with 2 extra lines at the bottom as below:

The from system parameter allows you to specify another system that is connected to the network. This means that you can actually restore libraries/objects from another system to the system you are signed on to using BRMS. For the purpose of this Workshop we will just do a restore from the same system. Press enter again on this screen and you will be presented with this screen (see next page)



This screen shows you every single save of ICMSCALL ever taken since BRMS was installed, if you were to Page up you would see all previous saves. You will notice the date and time of the saves, the save type (*FULL is a full save and *FILE is just an object save from the library). You will also notice the volume serial number (if they have a + sign next to them it means they are part of a set of tapes and if you put a 6 against the save it will tell you how many tapes are in the set and their volume numbers).



Now press F11 and you will be presented with the following screen:

You will now see exactly how many objects were saved and not saved. If you are going to restore a library it is important to make sure that there are no items that are not saved as you obviously want to restore the WHOLE library. For this Workshop we will pretend to restore ICMSCALL from 21/04/98. Select option 7 (Restore) and press enter.




If you now press F9 (Recovery defaults) you will be presented with the following screen:

This is where you must select your command defaults. Specify the tape device, end of tape option, allow object differences *ALL and most importantly the Restore to library parameter as you may not want to restore to the same library.



When you have filled in the command defaults, press enter and you will be back on the following screen:

Now press F14 (Submit to batch) and you will be presented with the following screen:

Enter a job name (ie: for this restore call it RSTCALL) and a job queue (normally RBTSLEEPER) and then press enter. The job will be submitted to RBTSLEEPER and will restore the library (Make sure you have all the correct tapes loaded first).



If you want to restore an object then do the same as restoring a library but instead of putting a 7 (Restore) against the library to restore it put a 9 (Work with saved objects) against the library (enter) You will be presented with the following screen:

This goes inside the library and gives you a list of objects saves (this will only appear if object detail *YES is specified). You can now put a 7 (Restore object) against the object you want to restore, then F9 to specify command defaults and F14 to submit to batch as before in restoring a library above.

WHEN DOING A RESTORE USING BRMS MAKE SURE THAT YOU ONLY SELECT THE LIBRARY / OBJECTS YOU WANT RESTORED, DO NOT SELECT ANY BRMS OBJECTS TO RESTORE OR YOU WILL CAUSE PROBLEMS IN BRMS.



STORAGE LOCATIONS Storage locations define any place where media will be stored both before and after use. We use the following locations: LANCING – We use Lancing as a CART3490E base now, so they have all of the CART3490E carts down there now, as well as some CART3590 carts which are sent down for saves and restores. OFFSITE – This is our offsite storage location, we send the carts offsite to DRS who look after them for us. TAPLIB02 – This is the 3494 tape library (ATL) that is used on NYNEXA and NYNEXB only. All carts to be used on these machines have to be at location TAPLIB02 or they will not be used. TOFIND – This is a location for lost carts, if a cart goes missing then you need to change the location of the cart to TOFIND. WARRINGTON – This is our onsite storage location. All tapes actually in Warrington should have a storage location of WARRINGTON. The above storage locations are the ones that we use all the time, there are others but we do not use them.



SAVING LIBRARIES/OBJECTS There are various ways to perform saves using BRMS. You can do STRBKUBRM, SAVLIBBRM, SAVOBJBRM and SAVSAVFBRM. STRBKUBRM From a command line type: STRBKUBRM (F4) You will be presented with the following screen:

For control group you must put in the name of the control group that you want to back up. For this Workshop we will use ICMSCALL (go back to topic Control Groups to see how to look at control groups to decide which one you want to use). For control group put ICMSCALL Leave schedule time as *IMMED unless you want to schedule it to run at a certain time. Submit to batch you can either put *NO which will run the save interactively or you can put *YES to submit to a job queue. If you specify yes and press enter it will give you further parameters to put in the job queue you want to submit to.



SAVLIBBRM The Save Library using BRM (SAVLIBBRM) command saves a copy of one or more libraries. This command saves the entire library, including the library description, the object descriptions, and the contents of the objects in the library. For job queues, message queues, output queues, and logical files, only the object definitions are saved, not the contents. From a command line type: SAVLIBBRM (F4) You will be presented with the following screen:

For Library specify the library that you want to save. For device specify the tape drive you want to use for the backup. For media policy specify the media policy that you would like to use with this save (ie: if you want the save to be kept for six months then specify media policy SIXMONTH) For control group leave it as *NONE The rest of the parameters are as the usual SAVLIB command and need to be filled in accordingly.



SAVOBJBRM The Save Object using BRM (SAVOBJBRM) command allows you to save individual objects or a group of objects that are in the same library. The system saves the specified objects by writing a copy of each object on tape, or in a save file. The objects are not affected in the system unless the command specifies that the storage should be freed. Restriction: No object being saved can be changed by a job that is running at the time the save operation occurs unless save-while-active is used. From a command line type: SAVOBJBRM (F4) You will be presented with the following screen:

This is very similar to the SAVLIBBRM command, you need to specify the Library name, the object(s) to be saved, the tape device to be used, the media policy, control group *NONE and the rest of the parameters are as normal for a SAVOBJ command.



SAVSAVFBRM The Save Save Files using BRM (SAVSAVFBRM) command saves save files created during BRMS/400 processing to tape. Various parameters allow you to select which save files that you want to copy to tape. For instance, you can select a range of save file creation dates to include in the save files that you want to copy to tape with further qualification of control group and media class. Expired save files that are not waiting to be copied to tape are deleted when the SAVSAVFBRM command processes. Data in a save file created with device *NONE will never be copied by BRMS to tape. It is intended for online access only. From a command line type: SAVSAVFBRM (F4) You will be presented with the following screen:

We would normally leave the defaults just as they are but would do a SBMJOB for this command to run. It will delete all save files after saving them.



SUMMARY That is the end of the Workshop, hopefully this manual will help you perform day to day tasks and give you a better understanding of BRMS. If you have any questions regarding this workshop, contact Colin Bangay (0411 278403)







Brms Workshop

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