Most of them can't justify the expense in keeping their system current.
As opposed to the expense of *not* keeping their system current? IMO this is a classic example of the dangers of not staying current: what should be "normal" procedure instead becomes a "big deal" simply because it hasn't been done for years. Meanwhile this customer who "can't justify the expense" of downtime just gets further backlevel and loaded up with the proverbial "Integrity Problems." If your customer's uptime is so mission critical that they can't spare an hour two or three times a year they really need to be on an HA system.
And i can't really see how your procedure would prevent issues with what is very clearly a bug in an IBM PTF.
In this particular case it probably wouldn't have helped as this problem was in an O/S PTF, however in a more typical backlevel PTF situation this procedure would allow a fresh load of all MF PTFs in proper order, without the potential problems of defective and test PTFs previously applied.
Regards,
Scott Ingvaldson
Senior IBM Support Specialist
Midwest Region Data Center
Fiserv.
-----Original Message-----
From: Lukas Beeler [mailto:lukas.beeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 10:32 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: IPL hangs at C900 2967, PTF SI30387 on a V5R4 system
On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 15:25, <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Next time you're three years behind on PTF's you might consider my
suggestion of:
Please, don't say "you". My machines are all current!
- Doing DSPPTF OUTPUT(*PRINT). Rerun to an outfile also.
- Upgrading them to a recent 'resave' of V5R4M5.
- Applying the latest cumes and groups and etc.
No chance in hell. It's far to expensive for a customer to do that - that's also the reason why most of them are badly behind on PTFs.
Getting one of our typical customer machines patched takes roughly 4 hours, if they're recent. 8 or more if they're not.Most of them can't justify the expense in keeping their system current.
Problem is that most OS service functions perform _extremely_ poorly on entry-level hardware (2 or 4 arms configs, 1-4GB RAM).
Second reason (other than to avoid ptf hang) is that you will now have
them on 545 which will make it easier for them to upgrade to Power 6
hardware.
At the time they decide to get a new machine, we will probably be on Power 8. They just bought one three years ago!
No, it doesn't make sense. I can't really argue the customers case, because i think what they're is very well thought out, but these are the facts.
And i can't really see how your procedure would prevent issues with what is very clearly a bug in an IBM PTF.
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