Plan for journal management

This topic provides you with the information you need to ensure you have enough disk space, to plan what objects to journal, and to plan which journaling options to use.

Before you start to journal an object, you must make decisions that will determine how you will create journals and receivers, what objects to journal and how to journal those objects. These decisions include:

• Whether to use iSeries™ Navigator to set up your journaling environment.
• What objects to protect with journaling.
• Whether to journal other objects that the system does not journal.
• Whether to combine journaling with the save-while-active function.
• How many journals you need and which objects must be assigned to each journal.
• Whether to journal after-images only or both before-images and after-images.
• Whether your application programs must write journal entries to assist with recovery.
• What type of disk pool in which to store your journal receiver.
• Whether to use the remote journal function to replicate the journal entries and receivers to one or more additional systems.
• Whether to omit the optional open, close, or force entries for your objects.

You also need to make operational decisions about journal management:

• How often must journal receivers be changed and saved?
• How often must you save journaled objects?
• How must journals and journal receivers be secured?

Finally, you need to balance the benefits of journaling with the affect it may have on your system performance and auxiliary storage requirements.

Use the following information to help you make these decisions:

• iSeries Navigator versus the character-based interface for journaling objects
  There are two environments that you can use for journal management: iSeries Navigator and the character-based interface. iSeries Navigator provides a graphical interface for journaling that is easy to use and does not require the use of control language (CL) commands. The character-based interface requires the use of CL commands or APIs, but has more functionality than iSeries Navigator.
• Plan which objects to journal
  When you plan which objects to journal, consider the following:
• Plan for journal use of auxiliary storage
  If you are journaling an object, journal management writes a copy of every object change to the journal receiver. It writes additional entries for object level activity, such as opening and closing the object, adding a member, or changing an object attribute. If you have a busy system and journal many objects, your journal receivers can quickly become very large.
• Plan setup for journal receivers
  The following topics provide information to plan configuration for journal receivers. They provide information about each option that you can select for journal receivers.
• Plan setup for journals
  The following topics provide information to plan configuration for journals. They provide information about each option that you can select for journal.