Welcome
CICS® VR and CICS® TS
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.
Planning for remote site disaster recovery
Using mirroring technology
The disaster recovery steps assume that you only use the remote site portion of the plan when a failure occurs at the primary site.

What's new in CICS VR 6.3
CICS® VR 6.3 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.
  - Planning for remote site disaster recovery
    - Using recovery reports
      CICS® VR has a recovery report feature that is helpful in preparing a recovery operation.
    - Preparing your primary site
      Perform™ the following steps at the primary site in preparation for remote site recovery.
    - Using CICS® VR at the remote site
      A failure at the primary site might require you to use the remote site to recover any lost data. If you followed the steps 1 through 5, you must perform the next steps at the remote site to recover the VSAM spheres.
    - DFSMSdss™ logical copies and change accumulation data sets, no log stream copies - at the primary site:
      The following scenario uses change accumulation data sets instead of log stream copies to perform forward recovery at the remote recovery site.
    - Using mirroring technology
      The disaster recovery steps assume that you only use the remote site portion of the plan when a failure occurs at the primary site.
    - Using the log stream copy utility to copy your MVS™ log streams
      When VSAM spheres are updated by CICS® applications and batch applications, log records are written to MVS™ log streams to record this activity.
    - Using the RCDS utility to export your RCDS
      The CICS® VR RCDS contains recovery information required by the CICS VR panel interface to construct a recovery job.
    - Using the RCDS utility to import your RCDS
      The primary site sends the remote site SAM data sets that contain extracted recovery information from the primary site's RCDS regularly.
- 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 6.3, 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 6.3

Using mirroring technology

The disaster recovery steps assume that you only use the remote site portion of the plan when a failure occurs at the primary site.

While this might be acceptable for many installations, the amount of time required to fully restore and recover the VSAM spheres at the remote site might not be acceptable for all installations.

For this reason, some installations might be constantly updating their remote site to reflect the activity at the primary site. This can be performed in a variety of ways using some version of mirroring technology. If you have this technology implemented at your installation, the amount of time required to recover VSAM spheres at the remote site compared with the disaster recovery method previously presented is significantly less. However, even though the disaster recovery plan is vastly different, the items CICS® VR requires for recovery remain the same. Below is a list of the minimum items required by CICS® VR to use the CICS® VR panel interface for recovery at the remote recovery site. Be sure your plan includes the following items:

RCDS
The CICS® VR RCDS at the remote recovery site needs to be updated so that it contains the latest VSAM sphere recovery information.
MVS™ log streams or log sream copies
Either identical MVS™ log streams with the appropriate log records or SAM copies of the log streams need to be at the remote site.
VSAM sphere backups
The first step of a complete recovery always begins with restoring the VSAM spheres from a backup. Recent backups of the VSAM spheres must be at the remote site and the RCDS at the remote site must have correct information about the backups.