Re: Ready to scrap an AS/400 -- MIDRANGE-L

I have cut & pasted several statements I want to comment on & cut out a lot 
of the prior e-mails, so hopefully the result is reasonably short

dwesloskie@altatennis.org writes:

>  We have started limiting users through the firewall and this seems
>  to have relieved it a little.  I know that I don't want Domino on
>  the production box anymore.  Our business partner seems to want to
>  sell us a bigger AS/400, but I don't trust them.  

Get 2nd 3rd 4th etc. opinion ... are they the same outfit that sold you what 
you now have ... did ALTA get Domino from same outfit that sold you the 
AS/400 & did that outfit make any noises about the need for more hardware 
resource to get the new software to run properly, or whether your different 
applications needed to be on differently optimized boxes, & did anyone 
understand what they were talking about?

> Impact here in Atlanta, is our business partner.

When we filled out our original sizing questionairre, our business partner 
called for a conference between me, my management, their sales rep, their 
technical people, to make sure that everyone understood the implications of 
what we wanted, in terms of performance, purchase costs, and operational 
support burdens ... on this basis we made some adjustments in what we decided 
to get, and were well pleased with the results.  It is a grave shame that 
this was not done when we did our upgrade, because the business partner sales 
rep was not looking at our updated sizing information, and sold us too small 
a new unit.

>  I also can't justify getting another AS/400 to do only one thing.  
>  Wouldn't I also run into the same problem of Domino taking all the 
resources
>  until the system locks up?

An advantage of two or more smaller less expensive AS/400 over one bigger 
AS/400, is that you seek out the optimal model of AS/400 for the tasks that 
are to be loaded on that unit.  They can all talk to each other.  

Production Box, Domino Box, possibly more.

The Production Box does the production applications very efficiently but it 
would be incompetent to manage Domino.

The Domino Box is optimized to be the best you can get for Domino but it 
would be incompetent with your production applications.

This is instead of getting one box that can do one kind of application swell 
but puts you in serious jeopardy of being able to cope with another kind of 
application, and end up picking a box that can handle all of your 
applications but none really well.

There is also a software user pricing issue.  If you have say 35 users on 
application-X & 10 users on application-Y & 15 users on application-Z all on 
the same box, you might find yourself having to pay for the equivalent of a 
50 user license on application-Y just because you need a big enough box to 
support all of these applications concurrently with a ton of users who will 
never be using application-Y.

>  NT?  That is not even an option!  I really would not want to go
>  from bad to worse.  I don't understand how the 170 (or anything
>  up to the 720) can even be called an AS/400.  Maybe my expectations
>  are too high.  Should I lower them? 

Your expectations may be higher than mine ... we are now on a 170, and our 
previous AS/400 box was an AS/436.  After we got past the vapor ware/400 
business partner upgrade error, I am reasonably happy.  Some stuff runs much 
faster on 170 than 436 & some stuff runs slower, but we know it is in the 
application design & the 170 support for various kinds of programming not 
being the same as 436, in which it is the same application software on both 
boxes & can be fixed, if I can ever find the time to fix it.   In other words 
the software ran inefficient on 436 but 436 hardware efficiency concealed the 
problems, while the 170 is less forgiving.

Our applications are very heavy interactive, batch, PC emulation, with 
separate ethernet NT for a lot of PC applications (I had suggested a second 
AS/400 server model for our internet serving & was overruled & I am seeing 
the corporate financial crunch now from this decision, but no one else agrees 
with my perspective). 

>  I would think that these models
>  are hurting the reputation of the AS/400.

I think that the strengths of the different models are poorly communicated 
outside the AS/400 technical community such that it is very easy for a 
business partner to sell a wrong model to some customer & very easy for some 
customer to fail to communicate to the business partner what they need to 
know to tell us the right model to get for our business.  

Now in your case, you might want to visit Al Barsa's web site ... I got to it 
by noodling around the Midrange dot Com Resource Pages, although it is also 
on his e-mail SIG ... as I recall, he has some kind of chart of all the 
different AS/400 models so you can pick out the right one for your work load 
... I do not know if he has updated his site with the latest IBM release.

> Well, you're right in that Domino is the biggest cause of my problems.  

> What I don't understand is an operating system that locks up 
>  and makes me IPL because the software running on it and
>  causing a problem can't be shut down. Does this sound familiar?  
>  I can't imagine that this is acceptable behavior.

It is quite normal in the Microsoft WinTel reality, but rather absurd on an 
AS/400 which usually has multiple ways to identify a task that is hogging the 
system & do something about it.  This is one reason why the main console on 
Green Screen AS/400 has higher native priority than all other consoles ... so 
we can cut in if something is locked up.  The only time we have ever been 
unable to shut down some task running on AS/400 is when either the person 
trying to do so has insufficient security, or we are trying to shut down 
piecemeal & do not understand the application.

>  actually thought I was doing a service to the AS/400 by ranting
>  here instead of a more public forum.  This is the only place I posted.

There is some discussion of NT vs. AS/400 on the Gartner Group's Tech 
Republic.  Check out http://www.techrepublic.com/index.jhtml ... get to the 
forums ... get to the one on NT in general, then when in there do a search 
for AS/400 ... there was a really big debate - I think it was about 2 months 
ago.

Al Macintyre  ���
MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 running on 
AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of Indiana--->Quality 
manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical sub-assemblies

Y2K is not the end of my universe, but a re-boot of that old Chinese curse.
The road to success is always under construction.
Accept that some days you are the pigeon and some days the statue.
Murphy's Mom brought wrong baby home from hospital so it should be Kelly's 
Law.
When in doubt, read the documentation, assuming you can find it.
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