RE: V5R2 Quality - Notes from the field needed

As big of an AS/400 fan as I am, just last Friday I heard of a compatability
problem that I could not believe.  Everything that I've heard to date about
LPAR has stated that your secondary partitions have to be +/- one release
from the primary partition.  HOWEVER, an S-Star processor will only run V5R1
or newer, even in a secondary partition and a Power4 will only run V5R2 or
newer, even in a secondary partition.  

This means if you are upgrading to an 825, you MUST run V5R2 only, and all
LPARS must also be at V5R2.  It also means that if you have a business need
to keep OV400 around a while longer (thankfully I don't have this problem
anymore) you CANNOT migrate to new hardware,(models 800, 810, 825, 870, 890)
the last processor that supports V4R5 is the I-Star, (models 270, 820, 830,
840, and not all of these) which does not support fractional processor
LPAR's.

The Chart of Supported Servers is here:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/lpar/chart.htm

Some friends of mine have been promoting a consolidation/upgrade of several
systems in their company to a new 825 that they will now be putting off
indefinately due to their current dependance on OV400 (on one application.)

On the bright side, I did also hear that IBM will be announcing an entry
level 810 with 750 CPW tomorrow, but that one will not be included in the
upgrade incentives....

Scott Ingvaldson
AS/400 System Administrator
GuideOne Insurance Group 


-----Original Message-----
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 11:40:51 -0500
From: "Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: V5R2 Quality - Notes from the field needed

> From: rob@xxxxxxxxx
>
> <snip>
> > you'd be hard pressed to run V5R2 on hardware from a decade ago.
>
> You absolutely CANNOT run Windows XP on a 10 year old PC.  So what's your
> point?
> <endsnip>
>
> And can you run V5R2 on an AS/400 from 10 years ago?

So it's a wash.  Hey, you brought it up, Rob, not me.  But I CAN run
programs I wrote 10 years ago on the latest version of the operating system,
which I cannot do with Windows.

Joe