The document discusses HelpSystems' Robot SAVE product, which provides automated backup and recovery capabilities for IBM i systems. Robot SAVE can automatically create restoration procedures and audit reports for backups. It tracks volume usage across the data center and ensures tape integrity. The presentation includes a live demo of Robot SAVE's features for backup scheduling, status monitoring, restoration reporting and a guided restoration process.
2. HelpSystems Corporate Overview. All rights reserved.
An Automated Recovery Plan Auditors Will Love
Broadcasting live from Eden Prairie in Minnesota, USA
Chuck Losinski
Director of Automation Technology
HelpSystems
Yvonne Schumacher
Training and Services Consultant
HelpSystems
3. HelpSystems Corporate Overview. All rights reserved.
• Why You Need A Backup and Recovery Tool
• Auditing, Reporting, and Recovery with Robot SAVE
• Live Demo
Agenda
5. HelpSystems Corporate Overview. All rights reserved.
• Restoration procedures created automatically
• Save audit report created with each backup
– Reports what was saved, volume usage, and errors
• Track all volume usage (physical or virtual)
– No manual tracking, includes ad hoc saves!
• Tape integrity across entire data center
– Active volumes cannot be compromised
– Tape location can be tracked automatically
– Centralized scratch pool is maintained
• Restricted state saves = automated!
• Skips over and reports bad tapes
– Active files, write-protected, or media errors
• Software encryption built-in (AES standard)
Make Your Backup and Restore Painless
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Robot SAVE Overview
Centralized Media
Management
Restricted
State
Tape Vaulting Domino/IFS
Object Archive
Restoration Reports
VTL or AML
• Files
• Libraries
• IFS directories
• Documents
• Guided System
Restoration®
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Central Media Pool
View any volume
Consolidated reporting
Shares media usage
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Once initiated, Robot SAVE takes over:
– Communicates with tape library; uses IBM SAV* commands
– Sends notification of critical issues (tape drive not ready, etc.)
– Records what was saved (or not) and volumes used
– Creates audit and restoration reports at completion
Schedule the Backup
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• Puts system into restricted state
– ENDSBS *ALL *IMMED or call a user program
• Executes commands
– RBSSAVE command
SAVSYS, full system save, etc.
• Restarts system
– IPL, restart QCTL, or call a user program
***When Robot SAVE is combined with Robot ALERT, you can
automatically receive an email notification if there are issues!***
Restricted State Utility
17. HelpSystems Corporate Overview. All rights reserved.
• Review a Robot SAVE backup
• Volume tracking
– Volume contents
• Restoration options
– Library objects
– IFS objects
– Guided system restoration
• Tape cross-reference
• Additional reports
Live Demo
18. HelpSystems Corporate Overview. All rights reserved.
• Why You Need a Backup and Recovery Tool
• Auditing, Reporting, and Recovery with Robot SAVE
• Live Demo
Presentation Recap:
19. HelpSystems Corporate Overview. All rights reserved.
Thank you for attending!
Contact Information
Website:
www.helpsystems.com/robot
Telephone:
800-328-1000 sales
+1 952-933-0609 support
Presenters:
chuck.losinski@helpsystems.com
yvonne.schumacher@helpsystems.com
Chuck Losinski
Director of Automation Technology
HelpSystems
Yvonne Schumacher
Training and Services Consultant
HelpSystems
Notes de l'éditeur
There will be a moment of silence while I start the recorder.
Intro: 2 minutes
Goals: 3 minutes
Overview: 1 minutes
Detail slides: 3 minutes
Demo: 15 minutes
Questions: 5 minutes
Things to do before the show: RSchl GUI and green screen to Wisdom system.
1. Upload the presentation and lobby slides 15-20 minutes ahead of time.
2. Change rights for attendees to only chat with panelist
3. Change event options and get rid of Q&A
4. Auto Advance the lobby Slides
5. Do audio checks very so often, talk about new features, new products, weather, kid sporting events, the Twins, etc. Ice fishing.
There will be a moment of silence while I start the recording.
CHUCK
Chuck
Automation of your backups is the name of the game for us. We not only want to automate your backups, but we want automate all tape tracking, tape integrity, tape movement, restricted state activities, skipping over bad media, and helping to automate the restore of your systems and its objects.
We have 1000’s of customers every weekend that run their restricted state saves totally unattended. Think of the time savings these folks experience in systems and personal time.
Chuck
HelpSystems offers a complete line of workload automation software products to automate a wide range of iSeries (AS/400, Power Systems, System i) functions. From job scheduling software to message management solutions, from backup and recovery to report management, and more—each workload automation software product works independently in its own operations management area. Used together, the products create a complete workload automation software solution for your iSeries servers. Performance Management, Storage Management, Report Management and Scheduling solutions are modular yet integrated. The major difference in the robot solution is the integration between the various products as they have been developed by the same team with the same set of standards.
Notes from Tom H: I would identify the products owned explain those first and then cover what might be of interest from the customer. I speak in terms of solution sets like: Enterprise scheduling, Monitoring, Backups, Report Retention and LPAR management.
Chuck
So what makes Robot/SAVE so good at the job of backup and recovery?
Save is very good at simplifying your backup, tracking what was saved, where was it saved to and how to get it restored.
We support virtually any VTL that supports IBM save/restore commands or any VTL that emulates a TS3500 tape library.
Domino in IBM i – on line backups
Chuck
Backup sets define the rules for your backups. You can specify even special backup set types for savlib *nonsys, savsys, and even save entire system (which is like option21). You can also specify number of rotations and expiration dates. Saving access paths, save while active and device types are all supported.
Yvonne:
Robot/SAVE introduced the concept of data center management for your entire network of IBM i. This to many is just a central scratch pool. But reality it is more. It is a repository for all the volumes that Robot tracks including saves performed on other systems with Robot SAVE that are sharing a central scratch pool as well as saves performed outside of Robot SAVE called Ad Hoc saves.
It offers consolidation of volume tracking information in reports and online views. Tape integrity even with multiple systems is the top priority. Volumes with active data will not be overridden without your permission. The interface with Robot ALERT makes sure you are warned centrally of any volume issues.
Robot SAVE will make sure you have scratch volumes available when you need them.
If you must reserve volumes for a specific system, it is simple to do and all systems will be aware and will not use those volumes.
Yvonne
Backups can be automated as you see here the RBSSAVE command is scheduled to execute daily backups.
Once the backup starts Robot SAVE takes over. It interfaces with tape libraries to automatically mount scratch volumes as needed.
This backup session records the everything that was saved as well as the items not saved. Audit and restoration reports are automatically generated after the saves complete.
Yvonne
The status and completion Inquiry screen is one of the most powerful tools for evaluating your backups.
You can view and work with every backup session that ran or is running to see completion and well as backup duration. Notice at the top it does say SAVES and RESTORES.
We will be demonstrating today.
Yvonne
The object archive menu is a great menu to help you find volume tracking information.
There are many archive views available. We are seeing the library level view however you can also get to the object level from here.
This menu is often used for restoring objects.
You can easily see the the dave date and time, the backup set and backup session rotation.
You also see the type of save done – such as a SAVLIB or SAVCHOBJ or even save to savf.
This menu also makes restoring IFS objects very easy.
Yvonne
The reports generated with each backup are a perfect guide to document your Recovery procedures.
However if you need assistance from Robot SAVE for disaster Recovery testing and even recovering your system,
a Guided System Restoration solution can help you restore large amounts of data or your entire system.
A recovery checklist is available to step you through the process.
You can also instruct Robot save to use special restore order for certain libraries.
Chuck – before we move on, now would be a great time to share the results of the polling questions.
Chuck
Created with each save automatically
Explains this report shows the errors so rather than digging through a joblog to find the exceptions, they are easily found on this report.
Chuck
Created with each save automatically
Chuck
Keep in mind that if there is a bad tape, write protected or active volume then Save will kick that volume out and load the next one, NOT sit there and wait on a message!!!!
Chuck will introduce the demo, Yvonne will execute! 1. Show them option 1-2 for daily save. Show audit report, and restoration report.
2. Retrieve volume information from the daily save (copy or write it down.)
3. Show menu 2-1
4. Show archive menu by library and IFS. Submit a restore to the CHUCKRST library and /home/chuckrst directory.
SKIP if no system with dup available. 5. Show RBSDUPROT tape cross reference.
6. Show volumes leaving or returning and other media reports IF TIME...
Seed questions:
1. Is there assistance with Robot SAVE configuration?
2. Is RSU for backups only?
3. What happens when I try to restore from a tape volume not loaded in my tape library? (Save generates an inquiry message to the operator to load that volume. Otherwise we’d load it automatically).
4. What happens if a volume is mounted that has active data on it or is write protected?
