Welcome
CICS® VR and CICS® TS
Setting up CICS® VR for CICS® TS
The tasks you need to do to set up CICS® VR for CICS TS.
Implementing CICS® VR automatic deregistration
The retention period values that you enter for CICS® VR automatic deregistration reflect your current environment and requirements.
MVS™ blocks compared with log stream copies
In order to limit the amount of data that is kept in the forward recovery and log of logs log streams, you might want to consider creating CICS® VR log stream copies of the forward recovery log streams.

What's new in CICS VR 6.1
CICS® VR 6.1 contains these changes.
Operating environment
CICS® VR uses logs to recover your VSAM data.
CICS VR Overview
Getting Started
CICS® VR and CICS® TS
- Setting up CICS® VR for CICS® TS
  The tasks you need to do to set up CICS® VR for CICS TS.
  - Setting up your CICS® VR ISPF environment
    Using the CICS® VR panel interface can significantly reduce the amount of effort and time required to recover your VSAM data.
  - Understanding the recovery control data set
    The CICS® VR recovery control data set (RCDS) contains essential information for recovering your VSAM spheres.
  - Deciding which VSAM spheres to protect
    You want to be able to forward recover all VSAM spheres that are defined as CICS® files. Data sets that are read-only or browse-only do not need forward recovery or backout, however, back them up regularly in case they become unusable.
  - Creating groups of VSAM spheres
    When you have decided which VSAM spheres to protect, you can create groups of VSAM spheres that share common attributes, such as spheres that reside on the same volume or are updated by the same application, into groups.
  - Registering or deregistering your log of logs data sets
    All log of logs data sets must be registered in the RCDS for CICS® VR to know about them.
  - Setting up the log of logs scan utility (scan)
    The LOGOFLOGS scan utility scans all the log of logs that are registered in the RCDS, gathers information, and updates the RCDS with this information.
  - Setting up CICS® VR change accumulation
    CICS® VR CA reduces the time it takes to perform a forward recovery.
  - Deciding if you want to use shadow copies
    You can reduce the time it takes to forward recover a VSAM file by creating a shadow copy of it.
  - Understanding CICS® VR automatic deregistration
    During the execution of various CICS® VR utilities, log of logs scan, backup notification, change accumulation, and so on. CICS VR stores information in the RCDS.
  - Implementing CICS® VR automatic deregistration
    The retention period values that you enter for CICS® VR automatic deregistration reflect your current environment and requirements.
    - MVS™ blocks compared with log stream copies
      In order to limit the amount of data that is kept in the forward recovery and log of logs log streams, you might want to consider creating CICS® VR log stream copies of the forward recovery log streams.
    - Automatic backup deregistration considerations
      The first step when recovering a VSAM sphere from a corruption is restoring the sphere from a backup.
- Setting up your CICS® TS environment
  This section describes the tasks you need to do to set up your CICS® TS environment for CICS VR.
- Using the CICS® VR file copy notification service
  This section primarily documents intended Programming Interface that allow the customer to write programs to obtain the notify service of CICS® VR.
- Using CICS® VR with CICS® TS at your disaster recovery site
  This section describes the tasks you need to perform to prepare your primary site and your remote site for disaster recovery using CICS® TS and CICS VR.
- Automated Recovery and Reorganization
  This section describes the tasks to perform when enabling automated recovery in CICS® VR V4R1.
CICS VR Exits
Running CICS® VR forward recovery
CICS® VR forward recovery consists of a restore and then forward recovery.
Running CICS® VR backup
The information in the following topics describe how to take a backup using CICS® VR. The panels and secondary windows are in the sequence that they are displayed during a backup job generation.
Running CICS® VR reorganization
You can reorganize a VSAM sphere using CICS® VR. VSAM sphere reorganization can increase the space of a sphere and its alternate indexes. It can also change the control interval sizes for a sphere's components.
Working with other VSAM sphere list pull-down menus
The CICS® VR recovery and backup functions are typically accessed using the Utilities pull-down menu after selecting VSAM spheres.
Working with CICS® Backout Failed spheres
The CICS® Backout Failed sphere list shows the CICS spheres registered for manual recovery or reorganization after CICS notification of a backout failure.
Working with logs
Using ISMF data set lists with CICS® VR
CICS® VR is integrated with ISMF so that you can create a CICS VR recovery job for the data sets in an ISMF data set list by entering the VSAMREC line operator or list command. When you enter the VSAMREC line operator or list command, the necessary CICS VR panels are called and you can create a recovery job for the VSAM sphere.
Running CICS® VR manually
IBM® recommends that you use the CICS® VR panel interface to create recovery jobs for your VSAM spheres. Using the CICS VR panel interface eliminates the need for you to manually keep track of daily update activity, logs, backups, etc. Also, the CICS VR panel interface automatically creates the recovery JCL for you.
Running CICS® VR batch backout
The CICS® VR batch backout utility allows you to remove updates that were made to KSDS, ESDS, RRDS, and VRRDS VSAM spheres by steps in a batch job. This section describes how to run the CICS VR batch backout utility.
Understanding CICS® VR reports
The CICS® VR forward recovery and batch backout utilities produce a set of reports upon successful completion. The reports are written to the data set allocated to the DWWPRINT ddname. However, the set of reports written for the forward recovery backout utilities differ from the set of reports written for the batch backout utilities.
Understanding IBM® program support
The IBM® Customer Engineering Program Support structure helps you resolve problems with IBM products, and ensures that you can make the best use of your IBM computing systems.
Problem determination procedures
If you have to contact IBM® personnel about a CICS® VR problem, you must classify and describe the problem.
Diagnosing the causes of abends
You can determine the cause of a CICS® VR abend in a number of ways.
Reference information
The reference sections of the information contain reference information that you need when you use CICS® VR.
Glossary
The terms in this glossary are defined as they pertain to the CICS VSAM Recovery documentation.
Edition notice
This is the information for CICS VSAM Recovery for z/OS. It applies to CICS VSAM Recovery for z/OS Version 6.1, and to all subsequent versions, releases, and modifications until otherwise indicated in new editions. Make sure you are using the correct edition for the level of the product.
Download PDF
Download the PDF format documentation for CICS VSAM Recovery for z/OS 6.1

MVS™ blocks compared with log stream copies

In order to limit the amount of data that is kept in the forward recovery and log of logs log streams, you might want to consider creating CICS® VR log stream copies of the forward recovery log streams.

Then, you can set a retention period for MVS™ blocks that is smaller than the retention period setting for log stream copies.

For example, if your environment limits the amount of data that can be kept in forward recovery log streams to three days, but you want to be able to recover VSAM data sets from updates made over the past seven days, you might want to consider the following setup:

Set a retention period value of three for MVS™ blocks.
Set a retention period value of seven for log stream copies.
Be sure new backups for the data sets are created at least every seven days. Therefore, you can also specify a backup retention period of seven days.
Create CICS® VR log stream copies of the forward recovery log streams every other day.
At a minimum, scan all log of logs every other day.

By setting an MVS™ blocks retention period that is smaller than the log stream copies retention period, you can limit the amount of data retained in the MVS™ log streams without losing the ability to recover VSAM spheres from updates made over the required amount of days. However, be sure you are creating and keeping backups according to your recovery requirements.