Preparing for disaster recovery at the local site

Preparing to recover your system at a remote site begins with creating a disaster recovery profile at the local site, building the profile, executing the job on a regular basis, and ensuring that the necessary files are sent to the remote site.

1. Create a disaster recovery profile.

   A disaster recovery profile must be created for the system or group. Within the profile, you define what recovery assets (archive logs, image copies, change accumulation data sets) will be used at the remote site. When the profile is built and run, IMS Recovery Expert takes the necessary actions to ensure that these data sets are available at the remote site, and that the RECON data sets reflect the available assets.

2. Build a disaster recovery profile.

   After a disaster recovery profile is created, you must build it to generate the disaster recovery preparation job. When this job is run, it generates control cards and JCL into the recovery PDS. These cards and jobs are needed for a successful recovery at the remote site.

   Tip: When building the application recovery jobs, store the generated jobs in the same partitioned data set where you will store the remainder of the disaster recovery jobs. This will consolidate all your recovery jobs in one place.
3. Run the disaster recovery preparation job.

   The JCL that is created from building the profile should be run on a regular basis. Run this job periodically, such as after a System Level Backup has been created and offloaded to tape for remote site recovery. If the DR method chosen includes System Level Backups, then this job locates the most recent System Level Backup that was offloaded to tape for remote site recovery; it copies the IMS Recovery Expert repository into the disaster recovery PDS; and it generates the JCL that is needed to restore IMS from the offloaded System Level Backup at the remote site.

   Depending on user options, disaster recovery assets such as archive logs, image copy data sets, and change accumulation data sets are copied to tape to be sent out to the remote site. A backup of the production RECON data set is created and conditioned to reflect the availability of the different recovery assets at the remote site. A copy of the conditioned RECON is also stored in the disaster recovery PDS.

4. Ensure that necessary data sets are sent to the remote site.

   The necessary recovery data sets must be placed on tape and shipped to the remote site. These data sets include:

   • The disaster recovery PDS. The disaster recovery preparation job generates the control cards and JCL needed for disaster recovery into an output PDS.
   • System Level Backups that have been taken and offloaded by IMS Recovery Expert.
   • Other recovery assets to be used for database recoveries at the remote site. These might include data sets that were copied by IMS Recovery Expert (archive logs; image copy data sets; change accumulation data sets).

   A list of tapes that should be taken to the remote site is generated by the batch disaster recovery preparation job.