Moving Longterm Reports to Disk—The REPMVTODSK Command

 

Before You Begin

The “Move Longterm Reports To Disk” command (REPMVTODSK) allows you to move reports from long-term to short-term storage. It restores reports stored in long-term storage, on tape, or an optical device, to a short-term status on disk.

For example, you can use the REPMVTODSK command to change the medium or device where long-term reports are archived. First, move reports archived for long-term storage on an optical drive to short-term disk storage. Then, archive them to long-term storage on a different medium or device.

Important

• You can use the REPMVTODSK command to move reports from long-term storage to short-term disk storage only.

• Examine your archive strategy and schedule carefully if you are using the REPMVTODSK command to remove your reports from long-term storage. You want to avoid the issue of moving your reports to short-term storage and then accidentally returning them to long-term status when you perform your next archive, which may be set up to run automatically (see the next bullet item).

• While you are running the REPMVTODSK command, do not execute the REPARCHIVE command and specify long-term storage—REPARCHIVE STAGE(LONGTERM).

• Reports with a Restored status and reports that were archived using Robot Save and an Automated Media Librarian (AML) require special processing (see Special Cases below).

• The REPMVTODSK command uses RBTSLEEPER, a multi-threaded job queue, as its default queue for processing. Because the jobs the REPMVTODSK command starts use the same device to restore reports, only one of these jobs can be active at a time. To submit multiple volumes for processing, you must specify a single-threaded job queue (see Specifying a Single-Threaded Job Queue).

• If the volume of reports you want to move to short-term storage is so large that transferring them from tape one by one is too time-consuming, you can use the REPMVTODSK *LIB option to specify a temporary library to use for the transfer instead of tape. To use this option, you must have enough disk space (DASD) available on your system to hold the reports in a library (see Restoring Reports by Using the *LIB Option).

Using the REPMVTODSK Command

To use the REPMVTODSK command, do the following (for examples of using the complete command from the command line, see Examples of Using the REPMVTODSK Command below):

1. Enter REPMVTODSK at a command prompt and press F4 to display the Move Longterm Reports to Disk (REPMVTODSK) command prompt panel.

2. Specify OPTICAL or TAPE for the device code to process the reports and press Enter.

3. If you specified OPTICAL, the Optical Volume Group Name parameter displays. Enter the HFS Volume group name you use for long-term archiving and press Enter.

4. If you specified TAPE, the Tape Device Name parameter displays. Enter the name of the tape device you use for long-term archiving and press Enter. The *LIB option was added in Robot Reports R07M38. You can use this option to specify a temporary library to use for restoration if you have enough DASD available on your System i (see Restoring Reports by Using the *LIB Option).

5. The Move Longterm Reports to Disk (REPMVTODSK) panel displays.

6. Enter the option you want to use next to the volume and press Enter.

   Note: The REPMVTODSK command uses RBTSLEEPER, a multi-threaded job queue, as its default job queue for volume processing. Because the jobs the REPMVTODSK command starts use the same device to restore reports, only one of these jobs can be active at a time. If you plan to process multiple volumes, you must specify a single-threaded job queue. For more information, see Specifying a Single-Threaded Job Queue below.

   • Use option 1, Submit Process, to submit a volume-processing job.

   • Use option 2, Stop Process, to end a volume-processing job. If the job you are ending is active, it ends in a controlled manner. If it is not currently active (for example, it’s in the job queue), it ends immediately.

Examples of Using the REPMVTODSK Command

The following examples show how you can enter the REPMVTODSK command from a command line:

REPMVTODSK DEVCODE(OPTICAL) OPTGROUP(LNGGRP)

REPMVTODSK DEVCODE(TAPE) TAPDEVICE(TAP001)

Restoring Reports by Using the *LIB Option

In Robot Reports R07M38, the *LIB option was added to the REPMVTODSK command to allow you to specify a library in place of a tape device. You can use this option to speed up the process of moving reports to short-term storage if you have a large volume of reports to move and enough disk space (DASD) available on your IBM i.

Notes:

• This process only works for reports archived after you converted to Robot Reports 7.

• You can still use the REPMVTODSK command directly from tape for reports archived on all versions of Robot Reports.

• If you do not want your job to run through the RBTSLEEPER job queue, see Specifying a Single-Threaded Job Queue below.

• You must ensure that you have enough DASD available on your system and you must monitor your DASD level closely during the *LIB process. If you restore a library to your IBM i and you do not have enough DASD available, you could bring your IBM i down.

Estimating the Number of Reports to Restore and the DASD Required

You can use the following SQL statements to identify your Robot Reports version 7 volumes to help estimate how many reports you need to restore:

• Use the following statement to create the list of Robot Reports version 7 volumes and sequence numbers reports:

  SELECT DISTINCT ASFRNV, ASTPLC, ASDVCD, ASRPST, ASALVL FROM

  RBTREPLIB/REPAS WHERE ASDVCD = 'TAPE' AND ASALVL = 0700

  ORDER BY ASFRNV ASC, ASTPLC ASC

• Use the following statement to create the list of Robot Reports version 7 volumes with the number of reports still active on each:

  SELECT ASFRNV, COUNT(*) FROM RBTREPLIB/REPAS

  WHERE ASDVCD = 'TAPE' AND ASALVL = '0700' GROUP BY ASFRNV

• Use the following command to generate a report to help you estimate how much DASD the tape sequences you are restoring will require:

  DSPTAP DEV(TAP09) DATA(*SAVRST) OUTPUT(*PRINT)

Using the *LIB Option

To use the *LIB option, do the following:

1. Enter the following command to create your temporary restoration library:

   CRTLIB RBTREPRST

2. Restore one or more sequences from a LONGTERM tape to the library using the following command. You can perform this step multiple times if you have enough DASD.

   RSTLIB SAVLIB(REPLNTRMLB) DEV(tapxx) SEQNBR(N) RSTLIB(RBTREPRST)

   where: tapxx is your tape drive and n is the sequence number from the tape.
   
   NOTE: The REPMVTODSK command in the next step does not look at the sequence number. The command will try to process all run numbers associated to the volume even if they are not on a sequence you restored. If you do not restore all sequences on a volume, you may encounter errors regarding run numbers that were not included. These errors are normal and can be ignored if you do not need the run numbers mentioned. 

3. Execute the REPMVTODSK command using *LIB as the tape device parameter:

   REPMVTODSK DEVCODE(TAPE) TAPDEVICE(*LIB)

4. When the Move Longterm Reports to Disk (REPMVTODSK) panel displays, select the tape volume id for the tapes you restored in step 2. Select and process all of the volumes you restored in step 2 using the RSTLIB command.

   

   The tape device (*LIB) is actually the RBTREPRST library.

   Enter a 1 next to each volume you restored in step 2.

5. When your job completes, the only items remaining in the RBTREPRST library will be expired reports that you cannot use on your system. You can clear or delete the RBTREPRST library.

Specifying a Single-Threaded Job Queue

Perform the following steps to use a single-threaded job queue with the REPMVTODSK command:

1. Enter CHGJOBD from a command line and press F4 to prompt it:

2. From the Change Job Description (CHGJOBD) panel enter REPMVJOBD in the Job description field and press Enter.

   

3. In the Job queue field, replace RBTSLEEPER with the name of a single-threaded job queue and press Enter.

   

   Replace RBTSLEEPER with the name of the single-threaded job queue.

Special Cases

This section describes reports that have special requirements to use the REPMVTODSK command.

Reports With a Status of Restored

The REPMVTODSK command will not process reports that have a status of Restored (the program writes a message in the job log when it encounters a report with a status of Restored). You must reprocess any volumes containing these types of reports by doing the following:

1. To change the status for Restored reports to their previous status, Long-term or Short-term, enter the following command from a command line and press F4 to prompt it:

   REPRMVRST

2. To process all reports, specify zero (0) for the Days Old to Purge parameter and press Enter.

   Important: The REPRMVRST command processes all reports that have a status of Restored and returns them to their previous status. If there are reports with a status of Restored that you do not want changed to their previous status, you must manually remove them using the Robot Reports Report Archive History panel before you execute the REPRMVRST command.

3. When the REPRMVRST command has finished, rerun the REPMVTODSK command to move these volumes to short-term storage.

Reports Archived Using Robot Save and an AML

To process reports you archived using Robot Save and an Automated Media Library (AML), you must do the following before you can use the REPMVTODSK command:

1. Change your Robot Reports archive options to not use Robot Save for archiving. To do this, select option 1, System Defaults, from the Robot Reports System Setup menu. Specify N (no) for Use Robot Save for Archive on the System Defaults panel.

2. Place the AML in manual mode.

   Important:

   • Be sure the tape device name you specify on the REPMVTODSK command TAPDEVICE parameter is the name of the tape device and not the name of the AML.

   • Be sure to reset the AML’s mode and return the Robot Reports archive options to their previous settings before you run your next long-term archival process.