We are in the process of building our new i520 ready to take over the development role from the old 520. One of the problems we came across was the use of the virtual images we have been using for the daily saves, unfortunately the FTP transfers always set the CCSID to 00819 event though we were requesting binary transfers? This rendered the objects unusable for some reason when we tried to attach them back to the Image Catalog, we will take a look at how that needs to be handled later!

So we were stuck with a problem, we ordered the new system without a tape drive as we have never used them on any of the other systems and IBM was loading up a $3,000 option. We do have a DVD RW on the new system but not on the old ones so even CRTDUPOPT will not work. So we decided to install RAP for the transfer process. We have developed a number of tools for RAP which allow objects to be copied between the systems.

Once we had installed the product we set up a couple of PDM options to allow the RAP commands to be called. First of all we needed to replicate the save files between the systems so we created an SS Option SYNCOBJ OBJ(&N) TYPE(&T) LIB(&L) this will be used to transfer individual objects and specifically save files between the systems. Next we wanted to be able to replicate entire libraries without having to save each object individually, we could have done a SAVLIB to a save file and transfered it, but the RAP process saves selected objects from a library to a save file which is replicated to the target system where the objects are restored. One issue we did come across was Logical files (LF comes before PF) so if any errors were logged we simply went back into the library after it had been replicated and took an SS option against each of the offending files. We don’t have cross library logicals so this was a fairly easy task. Before we can replicate the contents of the library we needed to create the library first, we have a RAP command to create the remote library so we added a RL PDM entry CRTRMTLIB LIB(&N) and a LS PDM option to replicate all the objects in the library SYNCOBJ OBJ(*ALL) TYPE(*ALL) LIB(&N).

The process was fairly simple, RAP was running on the target system so we used WRKLIBPDM *ALLUSR to list all of the user libraries on the source, a RL against each of the libraries we wanted to create then a LS to sync the entire content of the library. Any problems we cleared up with the SS option against the offending objects. And that was it, we replicated all of the development libraries to the new system in approximately 45 minutes.

Next is the IFS, that will be just as simple because RAP comes with new IFS replication features as well.

If you are interested in RAP for your high availability solution gives us a call.

Chris…