HP Archive Backup System for OpenVMS Guide to Operations

Saving and Restoring Data
3.1 Archives
3.1.1 Archive Name
3.1.2 Archive Type
3.1.3 Catalog
3.1.4 Consolidation
This name is used to reference the archive in save and restore requests. There are no required or
ad-hoc conventions for archive names, so they can reflect their usage in your environment. However,
there are ad-hoc conventions for environment names based on the archive name, so you
should restrict the archive name to 60 characters.
ABS supports two types of archive, which are hopefully self-explanatory:
• DISK - The archive data is stored on disk media, which can include optical disk. ABS
assumes that all disk media are online and mounted on the OpenVMS system before any
save or restore operation is executed. ABS does not perform any load/unload or mount operations
on disk archives. When you specify disk archive type, the archive must contain a destination
attribute indicating the disk and directory location of the archive data.
• TAPE - The archive data is stored on tape media, and uses MDMS for media management
control of the media. When you specify tape archive type, the archive must contain a media
type (defined in MDMS) that defines the type of tape media to be used for the archive. Only
a single media type is supported. In addition, the archive may optionally contain a pool
specification (indicating a set of volumes reserved to users authorized for the pool) and a
location specification (used to allocate a drive).
A catalog contains information about what data is stored in the archive and where it is stored.
Each archive uses exactly one catalog, although catalogs can be shared among different archives.
ABS defines a default catalog called ABS_CATALOG, which is assigned to all archives by
default if a different catalog is not specified. If you wish to define a different catalog for an
archive, then specify a catalog object name (not its location) in the catalog attribute of the
archive. For the archive to be useful, the catalog must be defined as a catalog object in MDMS.
An archive with a name of “DISASTER_RECOVERY” is the only archive allowed to have no
catalog associated with it and the save operation is therefore not catalogued (see Chapter 7, Preparing
For Disaster Recovery).
ABS supports the concept of consolidation criteria which determine when a volume set should
be retired from use in the archive and a new volume set used. ABS supports three types of consolidation
criteria, of which none, one, two or all three can be applicable:
• INTERVAL - You can specify an interval as a delta time from the creation of the current volume
set to the creation of the next volume set. The current volume set is retired if the consolidation
interval is exceeded.
• SAVESETS - You can specify the maximum number of savesets that should reside on the
volume set. If this number would be exceeded, ABS retires the current volume set and allocates
a new volume set for the archive. There is an ANSI-imposed maximum of 10000
savesets in a volume set
• VOLUMES - A volume set can contain one or more physical tape volumes. You can limit
the number of volumes by specifying volumes on the consolidation criteria. If this number
would be exceeded, ABS retires the volume set and allocates a new volume set. There is an
ANSI-imposed maximum limit of 100 volumes in a volume set.
3-2 Saving and Restoring Data