Choosing your save media
Learn about the different types of media that can be used for save and restore operations as well as which save and restore commands can be used with the different types of media.
Tape is the most common media that is used for save and restore operations. You can also save your user data and your system data to optical media.
The table below shows which save and restore commands support which types of media.
Table 1. Media Used with the Save Commands Command Tape Virtual Tape Optical media Virtual Optical Save file SAVSYS Yes Yes4 Yes1 Yes4 No SAVCFG Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes SAVSECDTA Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes SAVLIB Yes Yes Yes2 Yes Yes SAVOBJ Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes SAVCHGOBJ Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes SAVDLO Yes Yes Yes3 Yes Yes SAVSAVFDTA Yes Yes Yes Yes No SAVLICPGM Yes Yes4 Yes1 Yes4 Yes SAVSTG Yes No No No No SAV Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes RUNBCKUP Yes Yes No No No SAVSYSINF Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
- 1
- You cannot run this command on an optical media library device.
- 2
- You can specify SAVLIB LIB(*ALLUSR), SAVLIB LIB(*IBM), or SAVLIB LIB(*NONSYS) when you use optical media. However, you need to initialize your optical media to the *UDF format. You cannot use optical media that you initialized to *HPOFS format.
- 3
- You can save document library objects (DLO) from more than one auxiliary storage pool (ASP) to optical media with a single SAVDLO command. However, you need to initialize your optical media to the *UDF format. You cannot use optical media that you initialized to *HPOFS format.
- 4
- In a disaster recovery situation have physical media of the Licensed Internal Code and the operating system to begin your recovery.
Optical media library devices allow you to archive information to optical media, and they provide backup and recovery capability similar to tape media. The Optical Support book provides more information about using optical media. If you want to substitute optical media for tape in some of your existing procedures, you need to evaluate how to assign saved objects to directories on the optical media and how to name the media.
- Optical media
Optical media library devices allow you to archive information to optical media, and they provide backup and recovery capability similar to tape media.- Tape media
There are several reasons why tape media might be a good option for your save and restore operations.- Save files
Understand what save files are and how to use them in your save and restore operations.- Virtual optical media
Use this information to learn about virtual optical media in your save environment.- Virtual tape media
You can use virtual tape devices to save data directly to system disk units for convenience, flexibility, and in some cases improved performance. These scenarios will give you some examples of ways that you can utilize virtual tape in your save environment.
Parent topic:
Preparing your media to save your system