FDR - Fast Dump Restore

Enhanced Definition

FDR (Fast Dump Restore) is a leading third-party software product from Innovation Data Processing, widely used on IBM z/OS systems for high-speed backup, recovery, and data management of DASD volumes and individual datasets. It provides efficient methods for protecting critical mainframe data, facilitating disaster recovery, and managing storage resources.

Key Characteristics

- High Performance: Designed for extremely fast dumping and restoring of entire DASD volumes or large numbers of datasets, significantly reducing backup windows and recovery times compared to some native utilities.
- Comprehensive Data Management: Supports full volume backups, logical dataset backups (including VSAM and non-VSAM), incremental backups, and dataset copying/migration functions.
- Vendor-Specific Utility: Developed by Innovation Data Processing, offering specialized features beyond standard z/OS utilities like DFSMSdss or DFDUMP/DFRESTORE.
- Storage Optimization: Includes features for data compression and deduplication during the backup process, reducing the amount of storage required for backup copies on tape or virtual tape libraries (VTLs).
- Integration with z/OS: Operates seamlessly within the z/OS environment, utilizing standard I/O mechanisms and integrating with SMS (Storage Management Subsystem) for policy-based storage management.
- Flexible Recovery Options: Allows for full volume restores, selective dataset restores, and even point-in-time recovery, providing granular control over data restoration.

Use Cases

- Disaster Recovery: Creating full volume backups of critical SYSRES (system residence) or application volumes to enable rapid system recovery in the event of a catastrophic failure.
- Data Migration: Efficiently moving data from older DASD devices to newer, larger, or faster storage arrays, often involving full volume dumps and restores.
- Accidental Data Loss Recovery: Restoring specific datasets that have been inadvertently deleted, corrupted, or overwritten by user error or application malfunction.
- System Cloning and Testing: Creating copies of production volumes or datasets to establish parallel test environments for application development, system upgrades, or performance testing without impacting live systems.
- Volume Reorganization: Performing full volume dumps, re-initializing the volume, and then restoring the data to optimize space utilization and improve I/O performance.

Related Concepts

FDR operates at the heart of z/OS data management, interacting directly with DASD (Direct Access Storage Devices) to manage data. It is often used in conjunction with JCL (Job Control Language) to define backup and restore jobs, and it integrates with SMS (Storage Management Subsystem) for intelligent placement and management of backup data. While DFSMSdss is IBM's native utility for similar functions, FDR is a popular third-party alternative or complement, often chosen for its performance advantages and advanced features. It is a critical component of many mainframe backup and recovery strategies, ensuring data availability and business continuity.

Best Practices:

Regular Testing: Periodically test restore procedures for critical SYSRES and application volumes to validate the integrity of backups and ensure recovery processes are well-understood and effective.
Automated Scheduling: Integrate FDR jobs into an automated job scheduler (e.g., CA-7, TWS/OPC)