How to backup your Endevor Files

Products

• Endevor
• Endevor Natural Integration
• Endevor - ECLIPSE Plugin
• Endevor - Enterprise Workbench

Issue/Introduction

Looking for information on recommended procedures for backing up the Endevor files 

Resolution

Back-up recommendations for Endevor Files

It is recommended that you do weekly and daily backups of your Endevor files/data. 

Weekly Full  

1. Perform a weekly DFDSS Backup of everything (Package file, MCF's, Element Catalog, ACMROOT, ACMXREF, base and delta files etc...). Have this done in a single job on either Saturday or Sunday night. We recommend doing the weekly backup with a DISP=OLD on the entry MCFs in order to guarantee that nobody can update ENDEVOR while the weekly DFDSS backups are running. This should secure DFDSS backup quality and guarantee restorability.
2. After the DFDSS backups have been successfully completed, run an Endevor UNLOAD CHECKPOINT ONLY.

    UNLOAD FULL
    FROM ENVIRONMENT ENV1
    SYSTEM *
    CHECKPOINT ONLY.

    *** For more information on the Unload Utility please reference the Endevor Utilities Manual Chapter on UNLOAD/RELOAD/VALIDATE ***

   NOTE: UNLOAD jobs (incremental or full) use an ENQ on the SYSTEM level and will thus exclude updates of the ENDEVOR SYSTEM and its contents during these backups. This will guarantee absolute coherence of the backed-up entities.

Daily Incremental 

1. After the UNLOAD/FULL/CHECKPOINT is completed you should run daily incremental unloads backups.
   It is recommended that you run 1 job for each environment.
2. Optionally, you can perform a DFDSS incremental backup of the Endevor output libraries, Package file, ACMROOT and ACMXREF files. Below is a sample of the SCL used for the Endevor Incremental unload.

    UNLOAD INCREMENTAL
    TO DDNAME
    FROM ENVIRONMENT ENV1
    SYSTEM *

This procedure will allow you to have good backups to restore from if anything ever happens to the ENDEVOR database.

   NOTE: Another advantage is that if someone deleted something by accident you can do a transfer from the UNLOAD to recover.

We do recommend unload/reload for backups because of recovery. However, many sites currently do full DFDSS backups which if an UNLOAD/CHECKPOINT is done in conjunction with these, your recovery will be fine.

Back-up Recommendations for ACMQ ROOT and XREF Files

 ACMQ data is stored in two files, the ROOT and XREF file. When taking IDCAMS or DFDSS backups of these files individually, it may happen that the copies of the files are not in sync. This can lead to seemingly good backups, but when restored the files prove to be unusable. To take secure and synchronized backups run the ACMQ's reorganization utility BC1PACMO.  BC1PACMO tests the presence of two DD statements ROOTCOPY and XREFCOPY.

• If these data sets are allocated, the ROOT and XREF files will be copied securely during the reorganization.
• If the data sets are not allocated, BC1PACMO will reorganize the files without copying the data.
• If the data sets are allocated with incorrect DCB information, BC1PACMO will:
• •         issue ACMR050E
  •         not reorganize the ROOT and XREF
  •         terminate with RC12.
• Both files ROOTCOPY and XREFCOPY must be Fixed or Fixed-Blocked sequential data sets with an LRECL of 4096.
• The expected overhead of taking the backups during reorganization is about 1 second elapsed time.
• The presence or absence of the VALIDATE parameter will not impact the ACMQ backup function.

Additional Information

Unload, Reload, and Validate