V5R4 to what, and likely only until January

I'm not sure if an upgrade will happen. Or should. Boss related that
software support for V5R4 was to end in September. I thought I read that
it had been extended for an additional hefty charge.

Currently, it looks like the system will be shut down Jan 1, 2014. But,
that is not in stone as yet.

I know that analyze object conversion will need t be run. I suspect we
have some vendor stuff that won't pass. I am thinking about DBU and IQ.

What is end of life for 6.1?

We have a 520 with processor feature 735.

Also, I have seen in the past references that eith 6 or higher required
more disk space.

We have 8 4326 drives. They are at about 68 percent full. I am confused
looking at WRKDSKSTS. They are all DPY, in one ASP.

I have not had time to look at the MTUs yet. I started to look at the 7.1
MTU this morning. It is a lot larger than the MTU from the old days of
V2R2M0. I know they need to be read, and will do so.

Does the DASD look reasonable for an upgrade? If not, my next potentially
dumb question: I thought WRKDSKSTS showed how the drives were configured
for RAID. Is that only available from SST/DST?

My concern is if replacement drives are needed, for such a short period, do
all eight need to be replaced. Unit 1 is 68.4 percent full. The other
drives are between 67.7 and 67.8 percent full.

Does MTU have a ballpark upgrade time? Been 20 years since I have even
seen the MTU. Same for Boss. He was unaware of the potential object
conversion issues.

I know that PTFs need to be perm applied. I remember reading many
suggestions about upgrading to v5r4m5. Is that where the image catalog was
made available for IPL? Do CUME, HIPER, and/or group PTFs need to be
loaded and applied prior to upgrade? That sounds silly, since upgrade is
replacing stuff. But, system is way behind on PTFs, and I am wondering if
there are any weird issues that might only be "discovered" at a bad time.

I apologize for all the basic questions. Been a long time since I have
done this and I just want to make it go as smoothly as possible.

Thanks for any suggestions.

John McKee