How to Prepare and Recover CA Vtape › Virtual Volume Recovery › Extract a Virtual Volume

Extract a Virtual Volume

CA Vtape lets you extract a Virtual Volume from a Backstore physical tape to another physical tape in native or application format. The extracted tape can be read by the application without using CA Vtape.

Extract to CA Vtape is not supported. If CA Vtape is active when an Extract is submitted, the output tape mount may be intercepted by CA Vtape unless a unit esoteric or generic that does not include the Virtual Devices is coded on the SYSUT2 DD statement or the filter lists are updated to not include or to exclude the data set.

Extract recreates the Virtual Volume tape label, including the application data set name, on the output tape. The output tape VOLSER is preserved, but you can change it if you want.

To specify the data set name to be used by your tape management system when recording the output tape volume, code the DSN= you want on the SYSUT2 DD statement. Coding a DSN on the SYSUT2 DD statement will not change the DSN in the tape label.

If you code a temporary data set name or default to a system-generated name, EXTRACT will pass the first data set name on the Virtual Tape to your tape management system. You may need to code DSN= if your security product does not allow the EXTRACT job to OPEN for output using the first data set name on the Virtual Tape.

Syntax

The EXTRACT command can be executed in one of three ways using the following syntax:

EXTRACT
EXTRACT,VOLSER=INPUT
EXTRACT,VOLSER=volser

The following is an explanation of each line of the syntax:

EXTRACT

Provides default processing that copies from the virtual VOLSER to the VOLSER mounted for the output tape, keeping the output volume serial.

EXTRACT,VOLSER=INPUT

Provides a way to copy from the virtual VOLSER to an output tape and relabel the output tape to the same VOLSER as the Virtual Volume. This method supports extracting Virtual Volumes created by products that remember what VOLSERs they originally wrote to and cannot tolerate change (for example, CA Disk or DFSMShsm).

EXTRACT VOLSER=volser

Lets you relabel the output tape to the coded VOLSER.

Important! The EXTRACT utility does a standard open on the output tape and then changes to Bypass Label Processing (BLP). Some security products prevent users from processing tapes using BLP. In this case a user with permission to perform BLP processing must submit the EXTRACT job. BLP should only be coded on the output tape DD to bypass the standard open tape management validation when a foreign tape is being used.

Sample JCL can be found in HLQ.CCUUJCL(EXTRACT).