RE: burning v5r4 cumulative ptfs to cd

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Scott Klement
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 6:38 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: burning v5r4 cumulative ptfs to cd

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?

I also load PTFs for delayed application. The only real advantage to use image catalog in this
scenario is that you don't have to waste time burning the CDs if you've downloaded the images from
IBM.

A second minor benefit, is that if there's a problem with an image/CD you find out while
creating/verifying the catalog and not while in the middle of the LODPTF.

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...)

True, but I think it's a little easier to deal with the error when loading the catalog vs. in the
middle of the LODPTF command.

If nothing else, you can continue loading disks to the image catalog to make sure you have only one
bad one.

-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?)

Actually IBM does send upgrades electronically.

V5r4 was basically the first available, but then they went back and made v5r3 available electronically
also.

-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.

Yeah, like I said above it's a minor benefit when you load for delayed application.

-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.

You could do it with any type of remote console, even a twinax card in a PC with PC Anywhere.

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?

Nope, just quicker and less hassle in my experience to put them in an image catalog instead of burning
them.


HTH,
Charles



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