Re: burning v5r4 cumulative ptfs to cd

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Chad,

Thanks for the reply.  I appreciate that you took the time to list your 
reasons.   However, I'm not sure if our situations are just very 
different or what, but none of your reasons really make sense to me?

> -All your CD swapping/loading time is done in advance rather than 
> during downtime (some downtime savings on the upgrade)

I typically download the PTFs on a Thursday, load them from CD (for a 
delayed IPL during the next unattended IPL) during business hours on 
Friday.  Then they get applied on Sunday during the downtime.  Since I 
don't have to be in the office on Sunday, I guess I don't see the 
difference?   Granted, if something goes wrong, I'd have to physically 
come down to the office to check it out, but that's very rare, and it 
seems to me you'd have to do it with an image catalog as well (since the 
IPL might not complete, and you might have to take steps during a manual 
IPL to fix the problem.)

> -You are reading thru the entire CD by copying it to the IFS in 
> advance (and thus will probably find any drastic media errors in 
> advance of an upgrade)

Wouldn't media errors be detected when I load the PTFs for delayed 
application?   I guess I can see your point with respect to an UPGRADE, 
but not with respect to loading PTFs.  (And upgrades are done so rarely, 
I hardly even think about them...  maybe once a year?  Maybe less...)

> -Not having to physically handle 10+ upgrade CDs and probably 10+ 
> more cume/group CDs is MUCH less hassle during an upgrade!

Wouldn't you have to handle the upgrade CDs to load them into the image
catalogs to begin with?  IBM doesn't send upgrades electronically, do
they?  (Just PTFs, right?)


> -If you've ever had to go back through a set of cume/group CDs 
> because an error occurred at the end of the process, the reloading 
> process from catalogs goes much quicker than from CD

Shrug... in 12 years of installing PTFs, I've done that once.  It took
maybe 30 minutes.

> -With a HMC and image catalogs it is possible to complete an upgrade 
> without physically being next to the machine the whole time and 
> 'babysitting' the process

I don't have an HMC.

> It also seems more and more that IBM service is pushing the image
> method of delivery.

Not sure why it would matter to IBM whether I download them and burn
them to CD, or whether I download them and put them into an image
catalog.  They can't tell the difference on their end, can they?