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Back Up Control Data Sets

CA Vtape control data sets are critical system files. Keeping these files on a high performance, reliable DASD, helps improve overall performance and minimize potential system outages.

The z/OS control data sets for a CA Vtape Complex must be available at your disaster recovery site. These data sets consist of:

Global VCAT

The Global VCAT contains multisystem control information about Virtual Volume status. A hardware reserve is used to serialize access to the Global VCAT. This can require you to isolate this data set on a single DASD volume.

All CA Vtape subsystems participating in a CA Vtape Complex share this file.

The Global VCAT is not backed up for disaster recovery purposes. Instead, it is recovered from the BSDS1 control data set.

BSDS (the Bootstrap Data Set)

The BSDS mirrors similar information that is stored in the Global VCAT. This allows either data set to be recovered from the other. Place these data sets on separate DASD volumes, preferably in separate DASD subsystems so that they do not end up on the same physical HDA. This ensures that a single hardware failure does not damage both data sets.

All CA Vtape subsystems participating in a CA Vtape Complex share this file.

Back up the BSDS regularly for disaster recovery purposes.

Local VCAT

The Local VCAT file records information specific to a single CA Vtape Subsystem instance. Each subsystem must have a unique Local VCAT. This data set is used primarily as a work area for transient information and to contain the attribute settings that are loaded from parmlib.

For disaster recovery, define a new Local VCAT.

The typical actions at a disaster recovery site are to:

  1. Define and initialize a new Local VCAT.
  2. Restore the BSDS from the most current backup.
  3. Recover the Global VCAT from the restored BSDS.