RE: HMC 8.8.6.0 SP1 Heads Up

Thanks for the info. I ran into this last week but thought it had to do with partitions being on different OS levels and swapping the tape drive. Thought I would wait until all were up to the same level before investigating further, but this gives me more information to work with.

Dave


Dave Snyder
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-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of DrFranken
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2017 9:14 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: HMC 8.8.6.0 SP1 Heads Up

There is a bug introduced in 8.8.6.0 SP1 where shutting down a partition does NOT always release resources such as tape drives.

IBM Claimed my automation processes were to blame but the issue was in fact the updated HMC Code. Now you would THINK this would be firmware not HMC but IBM say it's the HMC.

We use an automated process to: flash copy/ IPL the flashcopy partition/ do backup/ PWRDWNSYS/ end flash copy/ pull the tape drive back to the production. Then we catalog the catalog the tape to a file on production for verification and knowing what's on each tape. The move of the tape back to production began failing with SP1 because even though it was shut down, the drive is still locked to the flash copy partition. Only solution is to bring it back up, then move it, then power back down. Yuck!

While this particular customer is using an automated process the the problem could easily happen with manual shutdowns as well.

This problem specifically is happening on Power7 hardware but IBM would not say either way if the problem could also occur on Power8.

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- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
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