RACF® allows you to provide a backup database to which you can switch without a re-IPL should your primary RACF database fail. A backup RACF database reflects the contents of the primary database. Once the installation has created the backup database, RACF can maintain it automatically.

You can decide to back up all of the data sets in your primary database, or some of them, depending on the needs of your installation. Use the RACF data set name table (ICHRDSNT) to control the amount of updating to the backup database. For information on ICHRDSNT, see The data set name table.

RACF allocates the data sets for the backup database at the same time it allocates the data sets for the primary database; therefore, the backup data sets must be online during RACF initialization. In case of an I/O error on a data set in the primary database, RACF automatically switches to your backup RACF database without requiring the operator to enter a password. The primary and backup databases should reside on different real devices and on different paths. For a discussion of how to handle database failures, see Failures on the RACF database.

For additional information on backing up your database, see Creating backup RACF databases.