Advantages of using BRMS
Backup, Recovery, and Media Services (BRMS) provides a robust, easy-to-use graphical user interface to perform save and recovery operations and to manage media.
On the IBM® i operating system, you can perform backup and recovery operations in several ways. You can use local save and restore commands or the Save menu options, or you can create CL programs. However, BRMS provides a more dynamic solution for your backup and recovery needs, enables you to manage your media, provides archiving capabilities for infrequently used objects. It also maintains a history of all saved items, which simplifies the restore process and enables BRMS to create a detailed recovery report. BRMS provides the following added functions that other backup solutions do not have:
- Graphical interface
- The BRMS graphical interface is available as a plug-in for the System i® Navigator client and for the IBM Systems Director Web environment. The BRMS interface provides more granular backups of individual files and directories, the ability to create control groups to manage archives and backups on your system, a simple save history query function to quickly locate items to restore, and an easy, effective method of managing media and devices used for BRMS save operations.
- Tailored save operations
- BRMS includes several standard control groups that cover your basic needs, but you can also create customized control groups that save data based on your company's specific needs. You have the option to create archive control groups, which provide a systematic way of saving infrequently used objects to media to free space on the system, and backup control groups, which perform save operations on data that is critical to your day-to-day operations. You can also choose to back up individual files or directories or to perform incremental and online backups of Lotus® servers while they are still active.
- Lotus server online and incremental saves
- BRMS enables you to save Lotus servers while they are active. You can also easily define items to omit from the save operation.
- Enhanced save-while-active function
- BRMS allows you to use your system during all or part of the save process, which can help you reduce or eliminate your downtime for certain save operations.
- Parallel save and restore support
- BRMS provides the ability to save libraries and objects to multiple devices at once. You can use up to 32 devices in this manner.
- Network feature
- By placing multiple systems in a BRMS network, you can share BRMS control groups, policies, media information, and storage locations across the network. This allows you to manage save and restore operations across all of your systems in a consistent manner.
- Media and device management
- BRMS enables you to keep an inventory of your media and track everything that is on them. When you do a backup, BRMS lets you know which tapes to use, so you do not have to worry about writing over active data. In addition, you can manage devices, such as Tivoli® Storage Manager servers, to store your saved data.
- Step-by-step disaster recovery
After every backup, you can print a disaster recovery report that will guide you through the recovery of your system. It even tells you which media you need to restore on which pieces of the system.
Note: It is recommended that after every scheduled backup, you print your disaster recovery report. In the event of an unplanned system outage, this report will guide you through a recovery of your entire system.