Welcome
CICS® VR and CICS® TS
Automated Recovery and Reorganization
This section describes the tasks to perform when enabling automated recovery in CICS® VR V4R1.
Automated Recovery Overview
CICS® VR automated recovery support provides several functions.

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® 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.
  - Automated Recovery Overview
    CICS® VR automated recovery support provides several functions.
  - Preparing for Automated Recovery
    Perform™ the following steps to prepare for Automated Recovery.
  - Reorganization Overview
    Reorganization is required when more space is needed.
  - Preparing for Reorganization
    When preparing for reorganization, the started tasks DWWCBINF, DWWCBRRY and DWWCBRRG are defined.
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

Automated Recovery Overview

CICS® VR automated recovery support provides several functions.

Within CICS®, the corruption of a VSAM data set, or the need for a VSAM data set reorganization, produces an alert for CICS® VR to take action.
Within CICS® VR, recovery or reorganization jobs can be created and submitted automatically. This automation is optional.
Within a CICS® VR recovery or reorganization job, extra steps is included automatically to request that CICS® take the data set offline from CICS® before the forward recovery or reorganization begins, and to bring the data set back online following the forward recovery or reorganization. These steps enable CICS® to retry its backout.

The automation is for CICS® online processes only. The automation cannot be used for batch processes. Automated recovery jobs can be created for forward recovery or reorganization, but not for both in the same job.

Note:

Batch backout for failed batch processes can be automated.

When CICS® detects that a VSAM file has been corrupted in a way that would usually require recovery or file reorganization, it informs CICS® VR. CICS® VR detects the event and take appropriate action.

The error detection process is fully automatic, but the user can specify whether the subsequent recovery is fully automatic so that no intervention is required, or non-automatic, so that the recovery job is started from the panel interface. This feature is enabled using the CBAUTO parameter, as described in Preparing for Automated Recovery.

The skeletons used for restore or recovery are generally the same for both automatic and manual jobs. The exception is the DWWAJOB skeleton used in automatic recovery job construction. For manual recovery job construction, the DWWUJOB skeleton is used instead.

If the construction of an automatic recovery job fails, DWWMSG and DWWPRINT contains corresponding error messages. If failure occurs during manual job construction, the error is described by pop-up messages on panels. If the recovery job itself fails, a corresponding error message is issued to the system console, and also recorded in the CICS® job log. For more information about the messages and appropriate actions to be taken, see CICS® VR Messages and Problem Determination.