Hello Larry and Holger,
I understand where you're coming from, and no doubt is the same reason IBM
chooses to stick with the current supported OS versions.
I guess my only gripe is that, if and when we move to Power10, that won't be
until another year (?) at the earliest for scale-out models, as scale-up is
given priority this round. But now that places me in the 8th year of RHEL 7,
the 8th year of SUSE 12, and the 6th year of Ubuntu 16.04, all three of
which will only have 2 years left of general/standard maintenance (until
2024). Deploying a new vHMC appliance with an 8-year old OS is not my first
choice. While it's true that "Extended" or "Long-Term" support exists for
RHEL and SUSE, I believe that it makes more sense (in most situations) to
pay for an upgrade to a newer version of the OS instead of paying to stay on
an older version. Additionally, staying on a non-supported OS is not an
option for us, regardless if we were to isolate/air gap it from other
networks. (I'm looking at you Windows XP).
I don't necessarily think this falls into the category of staying current
with bleeding edge tech, and I do agree that there are not enough of these
appliances deployed to warrant testing on a large number of OS variants. I'm
just asking that they give me at least 5 years to work with an appliance
before having to plan a VM host upgrade again. As it stands, when 2024 rolls
around and the VM Host operating systems are no longer supported under
standard maintenance, I presume that by then 10.2 will be released and will
support the newer versions. But that takes me back to the same point: I'll
have to plan a VM Host upgrade after only 2 years.
------------
Jacob
------------
-----Original Message-----
date: Wed, 8 Sep 2021 17:49:56 +0200
from: Holger Scherer <hs@xxxxxxx>
subject: Re: IBM delivers the IBM Power Systems Hardware Management
Console Virtual Appliance 10.1
fully agree - and as the "mainstream" types of Intel Virtualization engines
like ESX, XEN, KVM is supported and available for free - this should be ok
for most of us, if not using a Power based HMC box.
-h
Am 08.09.2021 um 17:37 schrieb Larry DrFranken Bolhuis
<midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
IMHO The number of these appliances deployed isn't large enough to warrant
testing on a large number of potential VM Hosts. From my perspective I'd
prefer that IBM spend time fixing broken things or enhancing the HMC rather
than testing on a long list of VM Hosts.
Additionally consider that if you are moving to POWER10 or have other
reasons to require HMC version 10 then you likely have newer VM hosts
available. Further, if you do not have newer ones available, consider that a
move to POWER10 will likely be a server that will be supported for 5 or even
more years, meaning that those 'near end of life' hosts will reach end of
life before your need for the HMC version 10.
In other words if you're upgrading your Power System keep your VM hosts
current as well.
midrange.com
