Re: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME! -- MIDRANGE-L

I think it mentions in the manual somewhere that unplugging the system will
slow it down a little. ;-)

I remember when IBM got into the System/88 and after that there was a bit of
talk about making the AS/400 fault tolerant. Rumors. But it really isn't
that far off, is it?

Chris Rehm
javadisciple@earthlink.net
If you believe that the best technology wins the
marketplace, you haven't been paying attention.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Mildenberger" <Smildenber@Washcorp.com>
To: <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2001 6:22 AM
Subject: RE: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!


> Dan,
>
> I think this is one of the marvels of the 400.  One of our 400's has an
> external bank of drives connected.  This 400 is the mirrored backup of one
> of the production systems and is mainly just used for queries.  We came in
> one morning and a lot of the processing on this box was 'hung', but some
> jobs were continuing to run.  We were puzzled and when we went into the
> computer room to investigate we found the plug on the external drives and
> been accidentally pulled from the wall.  When we plugged it back in all
the
> jobs on the 400 that appeared 'hung' just took off and continued running.
I
> was totally in awe that a bank of drives could be unplugged and the system
> continues running, although it was a little behind :).
>
> Scott Mildenberger
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Bale, Dan [mailto:D.Bale@handleman.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 4:47 PM
> > To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> > Subject: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!
> >
> >
> > I just had to share this with the group.
> >
> > One of our branches (same one with the missing panel key I
> > mentioned in
> > a previous post) has a 9406-510 with an expansion box that houses
> > additional EMC dasd as well as the 3590 media library.  For
> > some reason,
> > the expansion box was never plugged into the UPS, even though
> > there was
> > a socket for it and the UPS had more than enough capacity for it.  I
> > wondered for awhile if the wall socket the expansion box was plugged
> > into was itself protected somehow, but was told by the electrical
> > engineer at the branch that it was highly unlikely.
> >
> > I had reasons for doubting him, though.  This branch suffers power
> > outages on a frequent basis, maybe once every two weeks for up to 10
> > minutes per occurrence.  The 400 never misses a beat and, since the
> > expansion box houses dasd for the AS/400, I figured that there was no
> > way the system could continue to run if those drives ever lost power.
> > The thing about that, though, was that the 3590 always had to be reset
> > from its panel after a power loss before the 400 could again
> > communicate
> > with it.
> >
> > Since this branch was several hours away, it was not feasible
> > for me to
> > make the trip to do this.  I had to work around the branch electrical
> > engineer's schedule, which (to make a long story short) was not
> > feasible.  Finally, I had been directed by my boss to "make
> > it happen".
> > I was able to talk the office manager to come in on the July
> > 4th holiday
> > to power down the system, pull the expansion box plug from
> > the wall and
> > into the UPS.
> >
> > But Mother Nature beat us to the punch.  Last Thursday, the branch
> > suffered a huge power surge (so I was told) and, according to our
> > interpretation of some SRC codes, had knocked out our workstation
> > controllers.  After trying a lot of different things to bring the
> > controllers back up without success, it was decided that we should IPL
> > the system.  Because we had no signon screen anywhere, we
> > would have to
> > do it from the system panel.  "Oh, BTW", I suggested, "Why
> > not move the
> > expansion box to the UPS after you power down and before powering back
> > up and save us from having to deal with it on a holiday?"
> > (Mind you, I
> > was third party to all of this since all my communications were via an
> > email pager as I was chugging along down I-75 on vacation.)
> > So, that's
> > what they did.  "Powered down" the 400 by pushing the white square
> > button on the panel, unplugged the expansion box & plugged it into the
> > UPS, went back to power up the 400, but WAIT!, there's a signon screen
> > at the system console!  The office manager signed on, and everything
> > worked fine, save for a few workstation jobs that had to be killed
> > manually.  Apparently, just pushing the power button does
> > nothing, but I
> > was presuming that my "sub" (my other AS/400 colleague here at
> > corporate) was leading the office manager through the steps
> > required to
> > power down the 400 - Oh well!  And the 3590 had to be reset from its
> > panel.  Hmmm.
> >
> > Needless to say, I was rather skeptical about this when I got
> > that final
> > page.  I finally got on the phone and called my sub to see
> > what was up,
> > and he confirmed that all was well and up & running.
> >
> > As far as I was aware, the expansion boxes do not have any
> > UPS built in.
> > Do the EMC drives have their own UPS'?
> >
> > - Dan
> > Dan Bale says "BAN DALE!"
> > IT - AS/400
> > Handleman Company
> > 248-362-4400  Ext. 4952
> > D.Bale@Handleman.com
> >   Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
> >   (Whatever is said in Latin seems profound.)
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