RE: SWMA, HWMA and Update Access Keys.... -- MIDRANGE-L

Pete
Ouch - FW910.30 is beyond obsolete. Released in May 2019, but that being
said congratulations on being an early adopter of the Power 9 platform.

From my position of ex IBM HW support my advice would be at the very least
to .......
1) Purchase HWMA for 1 year
2) Upgrade ( a full power cycle) to the latest firmware FW950.40 Over 30
HIPER/Pervasive fixes have been released in this time.
3) Towards the end of the year, repeat for update or upgrade cycle

then over to you on the cost / benefit of maintaining HWMA but at least
you will be up to date and will not be compromised by the hundreds of
missing fixes.

Shaun

Shaun Ryan
Systems Administrator Unix/Linux
[1][USEMAP] [2]P: +64 3 363 6939
[3]M: +64 21 974 587
[4]E: Shaun.Ryan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[5]167 Main North Road, Christchurch 8140

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Helgren <pete@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, 12 July 2022 7:42 am
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: SWMA, HWMA and Update Access Keys....

Thanks Jim. That would have been a "nice to know" before the UAK
expired. Firmware has always been a bit of a mystery for me on IBM i.
Never really gave it a second thought until Rob posted about issues with
incompatible levels and ensuing hassles with HMC, etc. I have been
meaning to look into it, since I knew I was back level.

The good Dr. Franken also weighed in with "IBM Has made many levels of
Firmware available even without hardware support" which makes me wonder
"Am I SOL without HWMA or not?" Current firmware on the 9009 I have is:

                            Display Firmware Status

Service partition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :   Yes

Firmware update policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :   *HMC

Server IPL source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :   Permanent

Firmware product ID/release . . . . . . . . . . . :   5733909 V1R1M0

Update access key expiration date . . . . . . . . :   07/09/22

           --Server firmware--- --Operating system--

           Fix         PTF       Fix         PTF       Update

Copy      pack        ID        pack        ID        Status

*ACTIVE   VL910_135   MH01812

           FW910.30

*TEMP     VL910_135   MH01812   *NONE       *NONE     None

           FW910.30              *NONE

*PERM     VL910_135   MH01812   *NONE       *NONE     None

           FW910.30              *NONE


Bottom

Pretty old, I know. So should I attempt to get HWMA? Follow the PRPQ
route to just take my chances with the status quo? Try to update the
Firmware to see if I can?

Pete Helgren
[6]www.petesworkshop.com
GIAC Secure Software Programmer-Java
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
Twitter - Sys_i_Geek IBM_i_Geek

On 7/11/2022 10:25 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
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