Auditing Your Backups, Part 2: History Logs

Submitted by Tom Huntington on Mon, 02/15/2010 - 3:03pm

Previously, we talked about your backup strategies and the importance of auditing your backups. We discussed how you should run independent checks quarterly of your backup strategies to look for holes and flaws in your plan, and to help guarantee that everything will run smoothly when you need it. Last week, we covered printing system information and save data areas. This week, we’ll look at history logs.

History Logs

History logs provide good information about how well backups are being executed on your system. Unfortunately, most users delete them after a few days. You should have at least seven days of history logs to audit your backup. The history log verifies that you’re executing backup commands on a regular basis. It shows the history of the SAV command on a system and it’s a good way to look for objects that aren’t being saved.

Use the Display Log (DSPLOG) command to view a history log. By default, this command shows the history log in a chronological sequence. It’s a lot of information, but if you know the message ID you’re searching for, you can speed the process. All operating system backup commands issue message IDs registered in the history logs. The message IDs may vary for different operating system release levels and there are more message IDs that might be worth looking for in the backup and recovery area. The following table shows message IDs for various save commands:

Message ID	Description
CPC370	Sent for each library that’s completely saved to media
CPC3722	Sent for each library that’s completely saved to a save file
CPC9410	Completion message for SAVDLO saved completely to media
CPC9063	Completion message for SAVDLO saved completely to save file
CPC370C	Completion message for SAV save of directory completely to media
CPC370D	Completion message for SAV save of directory completely to save file
CPF3771	Number of objects saved/not saved during SAVLIB command; issued if incomplete save
CPF3837	Number of objects saved/not saved during SAV command; issued if incomplete save
CPF9410	Number of objects saved/not saved during SAVDLO command; issued if incomplete save

You can use the DSPLOG command to specify a date and time range, and limit the list to one or more specific message IDs:

DSPLOG PERIOD((*AVAIL022702)) MASGID(CPF3837)

You can direct the output to a printer or an interactive display. The default is to display the information. If you want a hardcopy, specify an output queue on the parameter for output. If you display the history log interactively, position your cursor in a message and press Function Key 10 to view details about the save activity.

Next week, we’ll wrap things up…

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