Defining forward recovery log streams

You must define forward recovery logs for VSAM data sets that are defined as recoverable files. Neither CICS® nor VSAM provides any support for forward recovery logging for a unrecoverable data set.

Procedure

  1. Define recovery attributes for data sets, including forward recovery, in either the integrated catalog facility (ICF) catalog (if you are using DFSMS 1.3 or later), or in the CICS file resource definition.
    See Defining files as recoverable resources for details.
  2. Define a general log stream for forward recovery data.
    If you do not define a general log stream, CICS attempts to create a log stream dynamically. See Model log streams for CICS general logs for details.
  3. Decide how you want to merge forward recovery data from different CICS regions into one or more log streams.
    See Merging data on shared general log streams for details.

What to do next

In the event of physical failure or corruption, restore the most recent backup, and use a forward recovery utility such as CICS VSAM Recovery to reapply updates.

To recover from a storage failure, first restore the most recent backup to a new data set. Then use a forward recovery utility, such as CICS VSAM Recovery (CICS VR), to apply all the updates that were written to a forward recovery log stream after the backup date.