RE: HMC

1.  It's great.  It's just fantastic - it allows for a true lights-out
datacenter as long as you have network access.  Across the campus,
across town, around the WORLD.  Just install the WebSM client on your PC
- you've got system control anywhere you go.
(http://yourhmc/remote_client.html)  Config your System i Access
correctly and you've got consoles from your desk.
2.  It's not hard once you figure it out.  It's *DIFFERENT*, and that
was a huge hurdle for this market.
3.  Downtime is not affected in a meaningful way if you plan properly.
You can reboot the HMC without affecting your i5 systems, unlike a
primary partition on the old systems.  Also, doing updates of FSP code
can be done concurrent in some cases, and in others it doesn't take too
long (< 30 mins).  Not any longer than a single-image non-HMC-managed
system doing an IPL after a cume with a firmware update on it.

Don't be afraid.  Mainframes have been using an HMC for ages, although
not this exact code base, same idea.

There is absolutely NO WAY I'd go back.  This is the biggest thing to
happen to this platform since LPAR.

Justin C. Haase - Solution Engineer
IBM Certified Systems Expert - System i
Kingland Systems Corporation

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ketzes, Larry
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 7:29 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: HMC

I hope I'm exaggerating the appearance of some maintenance that I'm
seeing
discussed on this board for the HMC, but I have a question.

        Are the people working with HMC happy with it in regards to the
following?

        1) Functionality of HMC compared to alternatives.
        2) Ease of ongoing maintenance of care needed to keep HMC
current
and running.
        3) Downtime that has changed (maybe for the worse) for both HMC
and
i5 because of #2 above.


Also, if anyone with an HMC could now change their minds and use an
alternative, would you?

Thanks, Larry

Larry Ketzes
iSeries Senior System Administrator
American Life Insurance Company

One ALICO Plaza
600 King Street
Wilmington, DE 19801
Phone: 302-594-2146
Mobile: 302-559-1631

Fax: 302-830-4524


Email: larry.ketzes@xxxxxxx



-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jones, John (US)
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 8:08 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: i5 Firmware to HMC Code level table?

We just updated our DR system last week.  First we took the HMC from 4.5
to 6.1 in one shot.  No intermediate upgrade to 5.x required.  This took
a few hours as it included fixing a problem we had, backing up the HMC,
doing the upgrade (more of a reinstall) and then backing up again.

Then we took the iSeries firmware from what shipped in the machine back
in Oct 05 to the current release (240 IIRC) again in one shot.  Took
about an hour total including power off, firmware update, and IPL.

This was on a 'small' 570.  The only iSeries downtime was for the
firmware install.