RE: Budgeting to replace V5R4

Lack of time.

I'll admit. I work for a pretty good shop and we're normally not expected
to work an average of 50-60 hours per week like some shops I've heard of.
And, with the kids in every sport and activity I can think of trying to
put in extra hours is tough. We do expect those in the department who do
a predominance of their work on the i to sign up for 4-8 hours of after
hours work one weekend a quarter to perform full system saves, PTF's,
hardware/software upgrades, etc. We unofficially comp that. We use Mimix
to switch over Friday night of that weekend and back Sunday night so
there's those two brief outages to the general populace. I don't know how
casino's do this but they have to have some plan in effect. I am sure
they don't put some i in there and never, ever, do an IPL for several
consecutive years.

And, planning for the upgrade does take some time. I try to type up my
instructions so the others assisting me can continue on if I drop dead
during the weekend. I even went scouting out of range during one of these
scheduled weekends (which I've been told is to not happen again). 60-80
page documents for each system (~20 pages per lpar) is not uncommon.
Especially considering that I've loaded all PTF's on the system to be
applied at the next IPL before we start.


Rob Berendt