Re: SWMA, HWMA and Update Access Keys....

IBM Has made many levels of Firmware available even without hardware support. I have yet to run into a situation where PTFs won't go on without the current firmware but HAVE seen where they don't work as intended without that.

As to the lack of IBM personnel and parts in the hardware maintenance area that is a real thing. This is a consequence of them keeping parts in kentucky, not training folks, and working the remaining ones on excessive overtime.

It's also a consequence of good competition such as Service Express. :-)

- DrF


On 7/11/2022 11:25 AM, Jim Oberholtzer wrote:

You will not be able to update the firmware, and eventually not be able to
apply PTFs due to incompatibility, but the system will keep running.

You will need to request a PRPQ for the firmware support only, IBM will
only sell one year at a time on that. It's a royal, class A, major PITA to
get done.

IBM does not seem to realize that the dwindling support personnel in the
field and the awful lack of experience and education/training of these
folks are driving customers away from IBM Hardware support. Last week I
had to instruct the SSR how to replace a disk unit since "he had never done
it before on an IBM i system". Did not even know how to sign in to SST.
He was trying to get SMIT to come up (AIX utility).

That said, hardware support on a single system is not too awful in price.



--
Jim Oberholtzer
Chief Technical Architect
Agile Technology Architects


On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 9:52 AM Pete Helgren <pete@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: