CA 7 and Disaster Recovery Planning
Article ID: 27837
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
What features in CA 7 can be used to plan and implement Disaster Recovery?
Resolution
The basic strategy for building a Disaster Recovery Plan involves establishing a clear and comprehensive policy that ensures business continuity. Understanding and including the key components of the business is the primary goal. The complex nature of disaster planning, including evaluating the associated risk and potential impact along with testing and auditing requirements, make it an absolute necessity that each component participates and offers a well-defined approach to disaster recovery.
CA 7 offers a Disaster Recovery Mode option that allows CA 7 controlled workloads to be included in disaster recovery planning and to implement that recovery process when a disaster occurs. Identifying the appropriate components for a given disaster is obviously one of the major challenges. The CA 7 DR MODE option allows for a global default disaster class as well as the ability to define a specific job to a particular class. When running in Disaster Mode, the CA 7 Schedule Scan function makes the appropriate determination of what work to submit based upon the active disaster recovery classes. Let's take a look at the details of the CA 7 DRMODE and DRCLASS options.
DRMODE Options
The CA 7 Initialization File has two statements used for Disaster Recovery, DRMODE and DRCLASS. These are used to define the options for Disaster Recovery and to activate DR Mode.
The DRCLASS statement is used specify one or more disaster recovery classes that will be active when CA 7 starts.
Example
DRCLASS, CLASS=DR1,CLASS=DR2,CLASS=DR3
A default class can be specified that will include all jobs that don't have a DRMODE defined. You can also use a special reserved word, @SYSTEM to tell CA 7 to use the jobs SYSTEM name as the disaster class.
Example
DRMODE, DEFCLASS=DR1
The above example states that the default disaster recovery class is DR1. This would apply to all jobs that do not have a disaster class defined.
Example
DRMODE, DEFCLASS=@SYSTEM
The above example statement indicates that CA 7 should use the job's defined SYSTEM field as the disaster class.
Requirements and Triggers
There are special considerations that apply when running CA 7 in Disaster Recovery Mode. Should requirements for jobs be considered during recovery? Does this apply to triggers as well? There are two keywords that control how CA 7 handles requirements and triggers when in DRMODE. For requirements the RQMTS= keyword can be set to "DR" or "ALL". The "DR" value indicates that when CA 7 is running in DRMODE, job requirements will automatically be satisfied if the predecessor job's disaster recovery class is not active. There may be cases where predecessor jobs will never run in this particular disaster mode and you want the requirement satisfied. The RQMTS=ALL option states that normal job requirement processing will occur.
Example
DRMODE, DEFCLASS=DR1,RQMTS=DR
The above example states that the default disaster recovery class is DR1 and that requirements will be satisfied for jobs whose disaster class is not active.
Example
DRMODE, DEFCLASS=DR1,RQMTS=ALL
The above example states that the default disaster recovery class is DR1 and that normal job requirement processing will occur.
The TRIGGERS= keyword is used to specify how trigger processing occurs during disaster recovery processing. The default TRIGGERS=DR mode indicates that only jobs with an active disaster recovery class will be triggered. The TRIGGERS=ALL mode indicates that normal trigger processing will occur. If TRIGGERS=NONEXEC is set, all triggers occur, but jobs with an inactive disaster recovery class are marked as nonexecutable.
Example
DRMODE, DEFCLASS=DR1,RQMTS=ALL,TRIGGERS=DR
The above example states that the default disaster recovery class is DR1, normal job requirement processing will occur, and that only jobs with an active disaster recovery class will be triggered.
The VERIFY Option
The VERIFY keyword on the DRMODE statement allows operators to confirm a disaster recovery mode startup for CA 7. If CA 7 is started with the DRMODE=YES on the EXEC parameter and the DRMODE Initialization file statement includes the VERIFY=YES keyword, a WTOR will be issued to allow for the confirmation of the disaster mode startup. The default is VERIFY=NO.
SUMMARY
Disaster Recovery Planning is a complex and challenging task. Identifying and defining specific disaster recovery classes for workload components requires an in depth knowledge and review of the job management jobs and schedules. CA 7 is an integral component to Disaster Recovery processing and offers a complete and easy solution for reacting and recovery from a disaster.
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