RE: AS400 software upgrade

Rob,
You have hit the nail on the head. More information is still coming in

Customer would like to end up on V6R1 not sure why that release yet.

We are exploring all avenues to see what the best way to go is.

There is a question of software upgradeable to what levels and are the vendors still in business.

It looks right now a trip to the location is in the future.

Thanks Again
Dave
---- rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Is the whole story known here? We know they have a 9406-640 running at
V4R1. We know the OP has been tasked with trying to get it to V5R2. Which
I double checked and is the highest release supported on that. I did not
check all the intervening MTU's to see if there are elements of the
hardware which died somewhere along that path. Like supported load source
disk size.
The most important thing to remember is that V5R2 will die in 70 days
without a key.
Perhaps this isn't the whole story. Perhaps V5R2 is only a stepping stone
to even further. In that case 70 days is ok. There are a number of
machines which will go from V5R2 to V5R4. And some that will go from V5R2
all the way to 6.1. None that will go from V5R2 to 7.1. If this is in
the works, I'd take a breather at V5R4M5 and really read the 6.1&7.1 MTUs
and Infocenter stuff on upgrading those.

Some financial aspects we are also not aware of include are they paying
maintenance on this machine? Perhaps a new one will quickly pay for
itself. Are they running an ancient unsupported version of some third
party application and if something goes wrong along the way they will find
themselves without a key for that also?

Y'all know I am a big fan of staying current. I am also a big fan of
doing step upgrades versus migrations. But if new hardware is in the
plan, then I think I'd vote for the migration. It will help with any
possible "Oh crud, the ERP vendor won't give us a key for version 1.1 of
their software because it's not supported on anything newer than V4. And
we just can't upgrade ERP overnight".

Again, if you decide on a migration versus a step-by-step upgrade:
Perform steps 25 through 33 in the topic "Restoring previous release user
data to a new system: Step-by-step instructions" in Chapter 14 of the
Backup and Recovery Guide.
http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/topic/ipha8/books/sc415304.pdf

Hardware to OS release level mapping:
http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/i/planning/upgrade/osmapping.html

I wonder if a step migration might be forced by the vendor? Upgrade ERP
to some low level, Upgrade OS, repeat until both are current.

Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive
Garrett, IN 46738
Ship to: Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com

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