Re: Need for regular IPL's -- MIDRANGE-L

PaulMmn wrote:
> 
> At 04:07 PM 5/8/97 -0400, Neil wrote (in part):
> 
> >There's always some minor baggage that the system doesn't clean up after
> >itself - so there's some MINOR benefit.  We recommend our customers IPL
> >every one or two months.
> >Still - that's just a suggestion and not essential.
> 
> One of the things that seems to fill up quickly on our system is the '%
> addresses available.'  An IPL is necessary to clear these things out.

We had a customer with an application that ran SQL queries from a Unix
box to the AS/400 and then FTP'd objects back.  Apparently the 400
didn't clean up after itself too well and used up so many temporary
addresses that the had to IPL their mod 320 two or three times a week.
IBM's answer was to rewrite their application, instead of them fixing up
the (SQL or FTP ot TCP/IP) problem that wouldn't free up temporary
addresses.
Another solution is to migrate to a RISC box, when the number of
available addresses has been vastly increased.

> 
> >We still have some customers who insist on powering off their system
> >every night and IPLing in the morning.  I HATE people who do that.
> >You save next to nothing in power costs (most of these customers have
> >9402's & 9404's) and the constant off/on actually wears parts down
> >quicker than just leaving it on.  (Wouldn't be as bad if they did a
> >PWRDWNSYS RESTART(*YES) each day - even though that's totally
> >unnecessary - instead of actually shutting the power off).
> 
> Although our AS/400 seldom sleeps, I encourage all PC users to power off
> their machines.  My reasons:  (1) 8-16 hours of wear and tear on the moving
> parts saved  (2) 8-16 hours of electricity saved (3) tends to avoid those
> lightning storms overnight (4) re-connects the PC to the AS/400 after we IPL
> (weekly) and avoids all those "My PC is locked up / I can't sign on"  (5)
> Each PC powered off is one less left signed-on and open to the public.
>

Yeah - I do shut off my PC (althoug about half of our office runs off
our 7.5Kva BEST UPS), but the only time the 400 goes down is for
maintenance (usually to replace one of those 6390 8mm tape drives :-) ).

Remember the problem with the early 2GB drives on the 400.
The system would run fine, until you powered it off and the disks
stopped.
Then the heads apparently stuck and you couldn't start them up again.

-- 
...Neil Palmer                                      AS/400~~~~~      
...AS/400 Technical Specialist      ____________          ___  ~     
...NxTrend Technology - Canada      |OOOOOOOOOO| ________  o|__||=   
...Markham,  Ontario,   Canada      |__________|_|______|_|______)   
...Phone: (905) 731-9000  x238       oo      oo   oo  oo   OOOo=o\   
...mailto:npalmer@nxtrend.com    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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