Knowing what to save and how often to save it

 

You should save the parts of your system that change often daily. Every week, you should save the parts of your system that do not change often.

You cannot recover from a site loss or certain types of disk failures if you do not regularly save everything. If you save the right parts of your system, you can recover to point 4 (the last save) that is shown in the backup and recovery timeline.

 

Parts of your system that change often

This table shows the parts of the system that change often and need to be saved daily.

Table 1. What to save daily
Item description IBM-supplied? When changes occur
Security information (user profiles, private authorities, authorization lists) Some Regularly, as new users and objects are added or authorities are changed1
Configuration objects in QSYS No Regularly, when device descriptions are added or changed, or when you use the Hardware Service Manager function to update the configuration information1
IBM-supplied libraries that contain user data (QGPL, QUSRSYS) Yes

Regularly

User libraries that contain user data and programs No

Regularly

Folders and documents Some

Regularly, if you use these objects

Distributions No

Regularly, if you use the distribution function

User directories No

Regularly

1

These objects might also be changed when you update the licensed programs.

 

Parts of your system that do not change often

This table shows the parts of the system that do not change often, you can save these on a weekly basis.

Table 2. What to save weekly
Item description IBM-supplied? When changes occur
Licensed Internal Code (LIC) Yes Program temporary fixes (PTFs) or new release of the operating system

Operating system objects in QSYS library

Yes PTFs or new release of the operating system
IBM i5/OS® optional libraries (QHLPSYS, QUSRTOOL) Yes PTFs or new release of the operating system
Licensed program libraries (QRPG, QCBL, Qxxxx) Yes Updates to the licensed programs
Licensed program folders (Qxxxxxxx) Yes Updates to the licensed programs
Licensed program directories (/QIBM/ProdData, /QOpenSys/QIBM/ProdData) Yes Updates to the licensed programs

 

Parent topic:

Planning a backup and recovery strategy

Related concepts
Backup and recovery timeline

Related reference
Simple save strategy