Re: IBM Experience so far with new i5 -- MIDRANGE-L

Brad,

I think this is an excellent System i story. I also had a 520 that kept
phoning home when there were brownouts. IBM Rochester would call
immediately, and even sent someone out straight away when we lost a card in
the IXA attached xSeries server.

I was wondering how many people on this list who love this story have told
someone else OUTSIDE the System i world. It is all nice to have a lovefest
on Midrange-L, but how can we leverage this story on other lists and
websites as a plug for System i?

Can we Digg it? Can we get it posted to Slashdot? Are there other places we
should brag about System i?

Trevor

On 12/18/07 10:35 PM, "Bradley V. Stone" <bvstone@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

So, I've had my new 515 now for a few days. It's been interesting to say
the least, but tonight the support I received is worth mentioning. :)
should also mention in my 20 years on the machine, I have zero admin
knowledge (well, I may have helped order a few PTFs back in the day...
that's it)

Today I was messing around with my UPS. It is only connected via USB to my
PC.. for some reason the UPS software would run a .bat file with FTP
scripting commands in it. So, I found a bat to exe converter and finally
think I got that to work (I tested sending a message, and that worked, so my
PWRDWNSYS command should work now.. plan on testing it this weekend since it
is live now running my website).

Anyhow, while messing around I killed power to the i5... dead in the water.
woops. Started it back up, attention light was on... do an IPL (rebooting
always fixes things, right?)

Nope.. attention light is still on. I remember WRKPRB... and doing some
readingn it seems I'll need to use SST to do something... what, I have no
idea. I can't get in.. so I search and find an article on how to use the
panel to reset SST passwords using the LAN console. That worked, I now can
get into SST.

So I go into WRKPRB. I find the problem (actually the same one twice, one
from each IPL I suppose) and choose the report option.. even specified that
machine was still working fine (option 4?). Hmmm... status changed to
ANSWERED but that's it... 2 minutes later, my phone rings. I see it's a
507 area code... Rochester perhaps? I answer and the tech says he just
received my problem notification. I explain I'm a newbie, he chuckles and
says "no problem". He then talks me through using SST to acknowledge the
problem (which was nothing more than a loss of AC power) and then remove the
problem.

Kinda freaked me out with my phone ringing just minutes after the report!
But all is well now, attention light is off, and my problem log is clear. I
knew it wasn't a big deal, but I can't stand something not being "perfect"..
:) The attention light had to go off or I wouldn't sleep.

I do have to admit I was impressed. I remember back in the day calling
support for problems and gettingn right into a developer that solved your
problem in minutes.... nowadays I hear there is too much "front end"
problem solving tech support people and it takes a lot longer. That is why
this really impressed me. A friendly chap from just down interstate 90
calling me and giving me assistance for a problem at 9:30pm that wasn't even
a big deal.

I must say, from the issues I have had, I've learned more about sys admins
and am appreciating them more every day... :)

BTW, I did solve my reverse proxy issue I posted on the web list... :) It
was way easier than it was originally thought and uses rewrite module
instead of reverseproxy. :)

Bradley V. Stone
BVSTools - www.bvstools.com
eRPG SDK - www.erpgsdk.com