Re: Skipping lots of releases - Was: Looking at Power 7

[DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well Yaaaaaah! Customers who hang around on V4R3 for 10 years and then 
jump to 7.1 cannot expect IBM to officially support such a jump. Despite 
the fact that it works I do not tell customers: "This is supported, 
smooth, or perfect." But its way better than nothing.

Trust me, I know the difference between 'Supported' and 'Works' :-)  
While technically there is a difference, the customer just wants to be 
supported when it's done.

    - DrFranken

On 1/24/2011 2:26 PM, CRPence wrote:
> On 1/21/11 2:21 PM, DrFranken wrote:
>
>     The upgrade method described for restoring from a "far back" release
> is only supported for install over an N-2 release.  The IBM conversion
> routines have a design specification only to support coming from N-2,
> N-1, or N-0, so any object provided as part of the OS, an option, or an
> LPP that is restored from a release level from prior to N-2 may not get
> converted properly to the level of the installed release, for lack of
> any conversion capability from the older release.  An attempt to effect
> an install to greater than N+2 may cause the install of an option to
> fail, or worse, the effects to be unpredictable.  Typically such objects
> are only those that contain "user data", and most would reside in QUSRSYS.
>
>     An upgrade from v4r3 should not include restoring any of the IBM
> product\options nor especially any of the quasi-user quasi-system
> libraries such as QUSRSYS, QSYS2, and QGPL [or any others], if the
> installed release is more than N+2.  In such a scenario skipping
> multiple releases, various "user data" should be exported and then
> re-imported; e.g. DSPDIRE and ADDDIRE.  Installing IBM i 7.1 over
> restored v4r3 objects for which an attempt will be made by that install
> to "upgrade" any of those v4r3 objects [to the 7.1 equivalent object to
> contain the user data, again, within an install process] is not even
> close to being supported, nor likely to function well.
>
> Regards, Chuck