Subject: RE: Problems with FAVER
From: Kevin Corkery (kcorkery@live.com)
Date: Wed Nov 04 2009 - 08:50:46 EST
I don't think this is necessarily a FAVER issue, although it's a problem. At one site we had problems with some VSAM files and corrupted sequence sets. This was detected by DoctorD during backups and could be band-aided by using IDCAMS to REPRO the data component, sort and de-dup any possible duplicate records, and reload the file. We never got to the root of the issue although it appeared to be linked to the closing of the file inside of CICS while CICS was up; the files all had high insert levels against a multi-keyed VSAM cluster. There were a series of VSAM / CICS PTFs in recent months specifically addressing internal serialization issues during split processing and alternate indexes. The client where this occurred went out of business last year so I can never be sure if this was the underlying reason. So, in any case, another client has had this condition but it only happened once. The key point is that the error went undetected by FAVER2 until the restore was attempted. I believe the difference between FAVER2 and DoctorD is that the latter verifies the integrity of the sequence set during the backup for both forward and backward access. As I said, it only happended once and we easily got around it. This site never recycles CICS and we frequently use FAVER2 to perfon file reorganizations without incident. I guess the bottom line from your perspective is to insure that your backups are valid; I have no suggestion as to insure this other than immdediately trying to restore the files somewhere else. Also, FWIW, IDCAMS BACKUP with the COMPACT options uses substantially less storage on the output media than FAVER2; very significant when backing up using LAN-based VTAPE. Kevin P. Corkery Independent Consultant Voorhees, NJ 08043 -----Original Message----- From: owner-vse-l@Lehigh.EDU [mailto:owner-vse-l@Lehigh.EDU] On Behalf Of Wakser, David Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 7:55 AM To: VSE Discussion List Subject: RE: Problems with FAVER Allan: I had a similar problem with FAVER about 3 years ago; the backup indicated no problem, but the restore failed with either an invalid structure or out-of-sequence. I worked with both the FAVER people and IBM VSAM, attempting to solve it, but then the client decided they didn't like my naming convention for my "private" copy of the corrupted file, and it was deleted. From that point on, I could not continue diagnostics. I found the entire scenario very scary! David Wakser -----Original Message----- From: owner-vse-l@Lehigh.EDU [mailto:owner-vse-l@Lehigh.EDU] On Behalf Of Ron Ashley Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 6:59 AM To: VSE Discussion List Subject: RE: Problems with FAVER I have seen where pointers to file gets loused up and faver uses these pointers to go from 1 record to the next. Since IDCAMS uses a different backup structure I have done the following: 1. Backup file using IDCAMS. 2. Delete redefine file using IDCAMS 3. Restore file using IDCAMS. Then FAVER2 can be used on file and it would work. ________________________________________ From: owner-vse-l@Lehigh.EDU [owner-vse-l@Lehigh.EDU] On Behalf Of Allan Peterson [Allan.Peterson@revera.co.nz] Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 9:03 PM To: VSE Discussion List Subject: Problems with FAVER A backup of a production set of vsam files was used to restore with rename to a UAT environment, no errors issued. The UAT environment was then attempted to be backed up , but faver indicated a key out of sequence and a wrong length record size. I then ran a FAVER2 disk to disk from prod to UAT with rename , I then FAVER2 disk to disk with rename to another set... no issues F1EXPORT & F1RESTOR & FAVER2 are all at 9901 level and cannot find my notes as to how to look at CA to see whether there are any fixes They want urgent answers as to what has gone wrong and what I am going to do to remedy .... Allan Peterson Network Team Leader DDI: 09 442 8615 | Mobile: 021 750 529 | Fax: 09 442 8601 Email: Allan.Peterson@revera.co.nz | Web: www.revera.co.nz -------------------------------------------------------- WARNING:This email and any attachments contain private communications. If you are not the intended recipient, you are not entitled to read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this email and/or its attachments (if any). 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