Re: Is IPL necessary?

["James H H Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I am an RPG programmer and we have an Iseries 825. I was told by one of
> our operators that IPLs do not need to be routinely scheduled.
>
> Is this true? Is there any documentation I can refer to?

I can only speak from our own experience.

Our D02 (which has been in service here since before I arrived, albeit
downgraded from the production box to a development box) is on a weekly
"exercise" schedule, simply because it's left powered down when not in
use, and we've had problems with boxes left too long in that state.

Our 200 (another former production box, one that's now only used as a
conduit for occasionally transferring files from RISC boxes to the D02, or
for the unlikely event that somebody might need a CISC server for Wintouch
or ThinView) is also on an exercise schedule.

Our 40S (yet another former production box, used for all our C language
development because it's the only box with the compiler) is also on an
exercise schedule; on it, we've lost hard drives if it was left cold for
too long.

Our 170 (yet another former production box, used for RPGLE development and
for test and demo environments) typically goes for months at a time
without being IPLed, or even ENDSBSed.

Our big, honking, 2-tower, 1-hat 510 (received as barter from a customer
who bought a more modern box) typically gets its subsystems shut down for
weekly backups, but is otherwise left constantly up; the last time it was
cold-IPLed was when we changed out a cranky UPS some months ago).

In general, at least in my experience, you should only need to do a full
IPL on a system that's in constant use when you've got storage consumption
problems, or there's some other reason to physically shut the system down.
But if a system is used only intermittently, you should definitely put it
on an exercise cycle, especially if it would otherwise tend to stay cold
for weeks at a time.

--
JHHL