Robot/SAVE’s RBSDUPROT command comes to the rescue

Does your company have a legal, industry, or policy requirement to maintain duplicate copies of your backup records? If so, you’ll be interested in a new command RBSDUPROT that was added recently to Robot/SAVE.

This command duplicates a Robot/SAVE tape rotation and cross-references the duplicate to the original tape. You can tell what is on each tape because Robot/SAVE automatically maintains a record for you, helping you get away from error-prone manual methods of tracking duplicates. In addition, this cross reference helps satisfy auditor requirements for reliable tracking of duplicate records. Best of all, because Robot/SAVE knows how to handle multi-volume data, there’s no problem when your backup data spans tapes.

Before you begin
To use the RBSDUPROT command, you must have the following:

• Robot/SAVE 11.08 or higher installed on your system
• Two drives of the same type that use the same media

To help you manage duplicated volumes, select option 11, Tape Cross Reference Inquiry, on the Save Media Management Menu to display volume information for both the duplicate and the original volumes. Press function key 8 to print a report of your duplicate volume information. The Volume Inquiry panel also displays duplicate volume information.

Duplicating volumes using the RBSDUPROT command is considered an ad hoc operation. If you want to release the duplicated volumes to the scratch pool when their data expires, make sure to specify Y (Yes) in the Release expired Ad hoc tapes to scratch field on the Media Defaults panel.

When you submit or schedule the RBSDUPROT command, both the RBSDTALIB and RBSPGMLIB libraries must be in your interactive library list. The command is located in RBSPGMLIB, but uses files from RBSDTALIB. If you are scheduling the RBSDUPROT command using Robot/SCHEDULE, display the Control Options panel and enter RBSPGMLIB/RBSJOBD in the Job Description fields, and *JOBD in the Library List Name field.

Using the RBSDUPROT command

The following describes the fields in the RBSDUPROT command.

• Backup Class/Backup Set. Enter the backup class and backup set to which the volume you want to duplicate currently is attached.
• Rotation code. Enter the rotation code of the volume to be duplicated. To enter a specific rotation code, enter the code with leading zeroes. Specify *LASTRUN to select the last rotation used by Robot/SAVE.
• From device. The From device is the device where the original volume is mounted. Enter the name of a device, or specify *SAME to use the same device Robot/SAVE used to save the data.
• To device. The To device is the device used for the duplicate volume. Enter a device name, or specify *DEVGRP to use a device in the same group as the original device where the data was saved.
• To volume identifier. The To volume identifier is the volume to use for the duplicate volume. You can enter the name of a volume; *SCRPOOL to select a volume from the Robot/SAVE scratch pool; or *MOUNTED to use the volume that currently is mounted. Note: If you are using an Automated Media Librarian (AML), the only valid value is *SCRPOOL (scratch pool).
• File expiration date. You can specify an expiration date for the duplicate volume. Enter a date using your system date format. Enter *FROMFILE to use the same expiration date as the original volume. Enter *PERM if the duplicate volume is permanent, with no expiration date.

Contributed by Theresa Aleckson, Technical Consultant

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 9:47 am and is filed under Robot/SAVE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.