A tool for cloning, refreshing, and duplicating IBM® DB2® subsystems, Peoplesoft® instances, and doing SAP® homogeneous system copies are a must today. Clones of subsystems, databases, tablespaces or tables is what the BCV4/BCV5 Suite delivers... see link at end of this page for BCV5 info. Modern storage subsystems support sophisticated mirroring of disk data. Among other advantages, they have the ability to separate and reconnect the mirror copy or BCV very quickly (split and resume). The cloned disks thus created are known as: Business Continuance Volumes (BCVs).

The hardware vendors offer different technical solutions:

• Some vendors copy at volume level (Source->Target) whereby the VOLSER may be optionally transferred. If source and target are on the same control unit the the copy will only take seconds.
• Other vendors make a continuous mirror-copy of the volume and can interrupt the mirroring process within seconds.

However in the IBM® z/OS® world such volumes may be used only as backups when on the same LPAR of Sysplex, since the target files have still got the same dataset names and therefore:

• they cannot be catalogued on the same system,
• the catalog points to the source files,
• the VVDS and VTOC index names are identical to the original names,
• the ENQ feature of z/OS® prevents a parallel update of different files with the same dataset names,
• the DB2 internal catalog still points to the old volume.

Duplicate VVDS names, duplicate VTOC index names and hundreds or thousands of duplicate dataset names therefore prevent the immediate use of the target volumes. In addition there are problems with the DB2 internal catalog structure. Especially costly in terms of effort: SAP database servers under DB2.

What is required is a consistent renaming procedure for files. BCV4 makes functions available to do this quickly and systematically. After processing through BCV4 the target volumes may be used by standard access methods.

• BCV4 is "vendor independent" and will work with: TimeFinder®, Snapshot®, FlashCopy®, Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy, ShadowImage®, NanoCopy®, etc. The names used are the trademarks of their respective manufacturers. Of course you could also just use the generally available ADRDSSU utility to create a volume dump. Also, dataset level Flashcopies can be used.
• BCV4 is fast!! Take the following scenario with DB2 as SAP data server:

Scenario: Making SAP data usable with BCV4 ( SAP Homogeneous System Copy )

BCV4 offers complete functionality after the creation of the mirrored environment, since all necessary work is carried out in a single step. The user defines the following in the form of a table:

• Source volumes and Target volumes
• Source first level qualifier and Target first level qualifier
• Source user catalog and Target user catalog
• DB2: Source-DB2 and Target-DB2
• SAP: Y/N optional
  Example

Course of Events

Time	Source System	Target System
23:50	SET LOG SUSPEND	-
00:00	Create Target Environment e.g. Split hardware mirroring	Create copies
00:10	SET LOG RESUME	Rename the target datasets
-	-	Correct the VTOC and VTOC-index
-	-	Correct the VVDS
-	-	Catalog the target datasets
-	-	Correct internal DB2 structures Correct SAP to match
00:15	-	Start the target environment

The cloned environment is available within 15 minutes.

"Intelligent Software is all very well, but it needs to be installed, procedures defined. We want to discuss the implementation in advance!"

If desired, we’ll carry out the first cloning together with you.

Time $avings and Benefits

• Dramatically reduce the cloning process time from days to minutes.
  
• Improve turnaround times to programmers and users
  
• Ability to make cloning a scheduled batch process
  
• Automation that eases demands on DBA, Sysprog, Storage, and SAP groups
  
• Reduction in delays and associated costs

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Need to quickly copy or clone a parts of a DB2 subsystem, or just certain databases / tables?

Click here for BCV5.

BCV4 and BCV5, the most complete cloning solution available.