Re: Impact of changing the system name -- MIDRANGE-L

Thanks for all the suggestions Peter, Rob, Luis & Mark.

We will be going to 7.1 on the new machine. Actually, we are upgrading the existing machine to 7.1 before moving to the new hardware. We already have the "Enterprise Extenders" installed, so that shouldn't be an issue. I'll do some more investigation about switching the DDM files to using *IP instead of *SNA.

I like the idea of setting up the DNS entry for the new name ahead of time. That lets us start the migration earlier.

One other thing I noticed when I did the DSPNETA command. There was a "Pending system name" field right below the "Current system name". I pressed F1 on the field, but the description wasn't very helpful. Does anyone know how this is used?

Dean Eshleman
Everence Financial

On 4/9/2013 3:58 PM, Mark S Waterbury wrote:

Hi, Dean:

In addition to what others have already suggested, ...

What version/release of i5/OS or OS/400 is currently running on the
"AS400" system? And will the new system be running IBM i 6.1 or 7.1?

On that system named "AS400", type DSPNETA and press Enter. Notice that
(typically) there are other things that default to the "system name,"
for example, the "Local control point name", "Default local location",
and (paging down), the "Network server domain" may have been set to
"match" the system name ("AS400"). So, you may want to consider changing
those values, also.

Since you are going to have to change all those DDM files anyway, why
not also change them from using *SNA to *IP in the RMTLOCNAME parameter?
That way, you can set them up to rely on only a DNS name, so you should
never need to change them again in the future. Also, there should be
less overhead using *IP directly versus using *SNA, since using SNA
nowadays means "SNA-over-IP" -- and that is just extra overhead. Also,
at V6R1, IBM deprecated support for AnyNet, which is how they used to
support SNA-over-IP ... so you would need to install and configure
"Enterprise Extenders" -- an optional (no charge) component of IBM i (as
of V5R4 and above). But, if DDM Files are the only place you are using
SNA-over-IP, perhaps you can just eliminate it? As soon as you decide
upon the new name, you can create a DNS entry for it, pointing to the
current IP address of the old system, and that way, you can go ahead and
start changing all those DDM files on any other systems that "point to"
the system named "AS400" and switch them over to using *IP, and that
should be one less thing to worry about, when the time comes to upgrade
to the new system.

Hope that helps,

Mark S. Waterbury

> On 4/9/2013 3:07 PM, Dean Eshleman wrote:

Hi,

Currently, the name of our main IBM i is AS400. We will be upgrading
to a new Power 720 in the next month or so, and I would like to take
this opportunity to give it a more up to date name. I'm hoping this
will help to improve the image of the IBM I within the organization as
well. We already have a naming convention for our other IBM I boxes,
and I would like this name to fit in with the others. So, here are the
things we could think of that would be impacted.

DDM files on other systems that point to AS400 (we are using SNA over
TCPIP) - I can write a batch process to update all of these
Mapped drives on user PC's ?
Data source definitions on user PC's

For IP connections, we can keep the old DNS entries temporarily until
we get things migrated to the new ones. The IP address will end up
being the same, so I don't think that will be much of an issue. Are
there other things we need to consider? I'm hoping there aren't too
many other things we need to change, otherwise it will be viewed as
too much work to make the change worthwhile.

Dean Eshleman
Software Development Architect

Everence Financial
1110 North Main Street
PO Box 483
Goshen, IN 46527
Phone: (574) 533-9515 x3528
www.everence.com<http://www.everence.com>

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