RE: Raid problems

Depends on your point of view... OEM Drive Provider or IBM or End user

Now I have been one of all 3 at different times in some shape or fashion. Today 
I'm with an IBM Business Partner, before this I was an end user and before that 
I worked for a Third Party Hardware Maint. provider that maintained NON-IBM 
hardware in and on IBM systems. All views and comments are my own and may or 
may not reflect those of my employer.

If you are IBM, You either design and build the drive and controllers etc or 
are they built to your specs. You most likely write and maintain the microcode 
on the drive, controllers, system interfaces, system microcode and OS.

If you are an OEM chances are you must reverse engineer most of this process. 
You may even get your hardware from IBM but I'd bet you have to at least write 
your own drive code.

About the time V3 came out most of the OEMs doing disk and tape got out of the 
business because of constant high R&D costs to keep everything compatible. It 
was round this time I took the personal position that at least for the AS/400 
that IBM is the only way to go for disk and tape. Yes, I know they aren't 
perfect, but I don't remember my disk or tape stop working after a set of PTFs 
or and OS upgrade ether

To finally answer your question... Yes I believe NON-IBM disks have a higher 
chance having problems than IBM drives.

__________________________________________________
Kirk Goins
IBM Certified iSeries Technical Solutions Expert
IBM Certified Designing IBM e-Business Solutions
Pacific Information Systems - An IBM Premier Business Partner
503-674-2985           kirkg@pacinfosys.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Art Tostaine, Jr. [mailto:art@link400.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 3:12 PM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: Raid problems


Wow.  Thanks Kirk.

Is it possible that a 3rd party drive could be more prone than an IBM drive to 
miss failures and let the software damage the object?

_________________
Art Tostaine, Jr.
CCA, Inc.
Jackson, NJ 08527

> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
> [mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of Kirk Goins
> Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 11:25 AM
> To: midrange-l@midrange.com
> Subject: RE: Raid problems
>
>
> Here is a cut and paste of an IBM doc on this subject:
>
> IBM Software Technical Document
> __________________________________________________________________
> 
>/s_dir/slkbase.nsf/1ac66549a21402188625680b0002037e/e4899b4c32c9116f862565c2007cf565?OpenDocument&ExpandSection=1
> -
> 
>_Section1/s_dir/slkbase.nsf/1ac66549a21402188625680b0002037e/e4899b4c32c9116f862565c2007cf565?OpenDocument&ExpandSection=1
>  - _Section1Document Information
> __________________________________________________________________
>

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