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Faster backup method for System i

We have RJS Software on our system and all of our electronic documents are saved on our iSeries. When implementing the full system Save option 21, the procedure takes hours.

Is there a way to tell the command to exclude the IFS in order to make the process faster?

I'd recommend that you not exclude backing up the whole IFS. There are some system files in there that are critical to a full recovery of the system and they need to be saved.

Instead of executing Option 21, you could create a simple CLP that does a slightly different backup.

Here is what Option 21 normally does: 

 ENDSBS SBS(*ALL) OPTION(*IMMED)     
 SAVSYS                         
 SAVLIB LIB(*NONSYS) ACCPTH(*YES)    
 SAVDLO DLO(*ALL) FLR(*ANY)          
 SAV OBJ(('/*') ('/QSYS.LIB' *OMIT)  
   ('/QDLS' *OMIT)) UPDHST(*YES)     

 STRSBS SBSD(controlling-subsystem)
You could create a CLP with these basic commands and run it instead of running Option 21: 
 ENDSBS SBS(*ALL) OPTION(*IMMED) 
     
 SAVSYS     
                         
 SAVLIB LIB(*NONSYS) ACCPTH(*YES)
    
 SAVDLO DLO(*ALL) FLR(*ANY)  
        
 SAV OBJ(('/*') ('/QSYS.LIB' *OMIT)  
   ('/QDLS' *OMIT) ('/RJS' *OMIT)) UPDHST(*YES)   
  
 STRSBS SBSD(controlling-subsystem)
I'm assuming that all the RJS file are located in the RJS directory. If they are not all located in the RJS directory, then you must specify the name of the directory or directories you want to omit.

That's all there is to it.

This was first published in March 2009

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