Backing up and recovering a catalog

There are no special requirements to back up a catalog. Either the catalog is backed up during volume backup of the volume it is on, or it can be backed up by the BACKDS command. Although the catalog is open when the backup occurs, DFSMShsm enqueues on the catalog to prevent it from being updated while DFSMShsm makes the backup version.

Because this enqueue prevents access to the catalog by any other user, for the duration of the backup, it is imperative that the elapsed time of the backup be kept as short as possible.

Defining the user catalog with as large a data control interval size as possible dramatically reduces the elapsed time to back up a user catalog. Therefore, the user catalogs should be defined with a data control interval size of one half track.

Use the following procedure to recover a backup version of a catalog:

  1. Purge all jobs that allocate the volume.
  2. Issue the F CATALOG,OPEN(volser) command to determine which catalogs on the target volume are allocated.
  3. Issue, for each catalog that is open:
    F CATALOG,UNALLOCATE(catalogname.)
    to cause the catalog address space to close the catalog and deallocate it.
  4. Issue the RECOVER command to DFSMShsm.
If DFSMSdfp is installed, aliases of the catalog are backed up and recovered. When DFSMShsm attempts to recover a catalog, the following rules apply:
The recovery of a catalog has the following restrictions: