Re: V7R2 media

You did!

"I wish IBM could make it like other OS or even PTFs.. have the system
download the OS by itself, apply PTFs required, install and reboot."

OK you said reboot but we know that means IPL! :-)

Thing is it continues to get more complicated. There are more LPPs. More Open source things. More connections. More databases. More ways to use the system.

The "A" side is kinda like a restore point but not completely as it only has the LIC not the O/S or any LPPs. It's not intended for such a function.


Very few of my customers do their own PTFs. They have me do them so as not to have problems. Then they can spend their time doing stuff that benefits their business instead of reading all those pages. :-)

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 4/28/2016 12:22 PM, Bradley Stone wrote:

I don't think anyone was saying to automatically IPL. That could be
scheduled. If you're doing PTFs or an upgrade.. it should be more simple.

That IBM i isn't the only hardware/os with this type of upgrade scenario.
Worst case IPL to A which, to me, seems like the equivalent of windows
previous restore point.

Would I rather:

1. Spend a weekend reading hundreds of pages of upgrade instructions
jumping here and there and back and there and back, etc and HOPE it goes ok?

or

2. Run a simple command that does all the checking, updating, etc for me
and HOPE it goes ok?

:)

Brad
www.bvstools.com

On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 11:16 AM, DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Seriously though consider your PC. You use it, it IPLs (reboots) this
irritates you because you had stuff open. And that's just YOU!

Now consider your IBM i server. It has 3, 5, 50 partitions on it. The host
partition gets some PTFs It IPLs. EVERY Guest goes to sleep, and
(hopefully) recovers perhaps an hour later. EVERY user on the machine is
stuck. And oh boy what if the PTFs fail? Now you're in a full blown panic.
Did the thing do backups before that automatic IPL? Likely not, how would
it know where to do that to? Can you recover? Where are you? Out with
friends? Had a couple beers? Out of town?

And what about all those other partitions? They need PTFs too, when will
they IPL? How much disk do all those PTFs take on all those Partitions?
What if they are small and now run out of disk?

Next consider the servers they communicate with, how many of those are
disrupted now? Were there scheduled tasks that didn't or couldn't run? Did
they wait or fail? What's the recovery?

Today's data center is rarely just one server and rarely can you state "We
don't do any work after 8 PM until 7AM" Almost every machine I work on
today supports web instances one way or another many directly some as the
DB Back end. You cannot simply bounce those things at will.

You MUST consider the environment. This includes timing, backups,
sequence, Staff availability, changes the PTFs may include, SLAs etc.

I repeat: NO!

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 4/28/2016 12:05 PM, Rob Berendt wrote:

Larry,

We need details. Not that I suspect you prefer difficulty because that's
where your bread is buttered but I can see how others might.


Rob Berendt

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