Re: Development box is back online

Actually, I'd never recommend skipping HW maintenance *unless* you are a single person *development* shop (or very small). If I can't get to my box for a day, it wouldn't be an emergency. Yeah, my web site would be down and there might be some stuff I'd have to work around, but it wouldn't be a big deal. I can get plenty of programming done in Java, Ruby or PHP without my IBM i for a day or two. As long as I could fully restore (living without a backup/recovery plan would be foolhardy) even a few days of downtime wouldn't kill me.

BUT! Every customer I have had has been on HW maintenance. I always want them to be able to get immediate HW/SW help from IBM because there just ain't anything better than IBM HW/SW support. Nothing! Just because I like to DIY it and get my hands dirty so I get to know my i in a more intimate fashion, doesn't mean I want to do that for my customers. I want my customers to keep on keepin on. So they all have SW/HW maintenance in the very rare chance that they might need it.

Pete Helgren
www.petesworkshop.com
GIAC Secure Software Programmer-Java

On 5/9/2013 2:30 PM, DrFranken wrote:

Pete,

Your record is amazing! Now before a lot of people read that and decide
to cancel maintenance do consider how important the machine is to your
business. This stuff IS reliable but it does still fail. I HAVE seen
processor failures, memory failures, controller failures, DASD
Back-plane failures, and the usual DASD, Tape Drive, Tape, etc failures
too. I've see it caused by fire, flood, lightning, fork-lift and almost
by a roll of conveyor belt (That one got hung up just before it landed
on the system!)

All I'm saying is eventuality everyone's luck runs out and if you fail
at 5:01 on Friday with no contract, "Next Business Day" is Tuesday!
Think about that......

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com