Preparing custom applications

Some prerequisites are necessary when you are preparing a custom application environment.

The preparation information is valid for environments on supported storage hardware as well as for environments in GPFS™ filesystems. For GPFS filesystems, when you see the term volume group, read that as independent fileset.

IBM® Storage Protect Snapshot performs snapshot backups of plain file systems on a volume group level. Therefore, ensure that the files you want to protect are stored in dedicated file systems and volume groups.

In addition to storing the data in dedicated volume groups, those volume groups must be on a file system type that is supported by IBM Storage Protect Snapshot. Any other data that is stored on these volume groups, is also processed by IBM Storage Protect Snapshot, and it is included in the backup images. When the backup image is restored, any additional data in the volume group that is updated or created after the backup is overwritten.

Attention: Do not store any data that you do not want to restore within volume groups that are being processed by IBM Storage Protect Snapshot. If IBM Storage Protect Snapshot detects such data in one of the volumes to be backed up, the backup operation can fail.

In situations where files not associated with the application are in a volume group that is used for backup and restore operations, use the NEGATIVE_LIST parameter. This IBM Storage Protect Snapshot profile parameter can be used to control file processing. For information about the NEGATIVE_LIST profile parameter, see the profile section CLIENT for details.

Tip: To create a transaction-consistent backup of your custom application, configure IBM Storage Protect Snapshot to run a pre-flash and post-flash command immediately before and after, the creation of the snapshot. These commands can suspend and resume the application to create a consistent backup. For more information about these commands, see Backup and restore commands for custom applications