Scheduling backups to minimize your CICS TS down time

Your CICS® TS online system might be running 24 hours a day or it might only be running during certain hours. Schedule backups so that they do not affect your online CICS TS users.

If you have CICS applications that depend on data sets being open for update over a long period of time, deciding when to schedule backups can be tricky. Normally, you cannot make a backup of the data set while the data set is open. Thus, if a failure occurs that requires forward recovery, all updates that have been made to the data set since it was opened must be recovered. This means that you must keep all forward recovery logs that have been produced since the data set was opened. A heavily used data set that has been open for update for several days or weeks might need much forward recovery.

The backup-while-open (BWO) facility, together with other system facilities and products, allows you to make a backup copy of a VSAM data set while it remains open for update. Then, only the updates that have been made since the last backup copy was taken need be recovered. This could considerably reduce the amount of forward recovery that is needed. For more information on taking a backup copy of a VSAM data set while it is open for update, see Understanding the backup-while-open (BWO) facility.


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Timestamp icon Last updated: Friday, 29 November 2013


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