On Jul 27, 2005, at 6:33 PM, Taddei, Cathy wrote:
Greetings, Robert. I'm glad people on your planet are able to spend
all
their time on maintenance. I posted this several years ago on another
listserve, but it seems apropos here.
<rant>
I do not feel that my DB2 for z/OS v.7 subsystems running at PUT 0404
are "behind" on maintenance. Although I do try to periodically apply
hipers between maintenance cycles, I think being one year "behind" is
quite reasonable, given the complexity of applying, testing, and
rolling
out maintenance to multiple operating systems and subsystems. IBM's
attitude is that you should apply every RSU as soon as it comes out,
and
devote your entire staff to testing it and roll it out to all
production
systems within a week, so you'd never be more than 6 months behind on
maintenance (since, by definition, the RSU is at least 3 months
"behind"). That's fine for them, but when people on this list start
thinking that has any resemblance to reality, I feel the need to inject
some experiential data. I have come to expect IBM to ask me why I
haven't put on PTF's they haven't finished writing yet, but I'd like to
inform everyone else here that it just doesn't work that way. In the
real world, stability is more desirable than the latest bells and
whistles, so many companies intentionally implement change control
processes that slow the rate of change. Guess what? It works. When a
maintenance package is carefully scrutinized by several departments,
then the quality of the change improves. Because the change control
process is lengthy, we do mass maintenance much less frequently --
about
once a year here. When I have a problem, I expect IBM to give me a fix
for my problem, not everyone else's. Sure, I could fix my problem by
applying everything out there, but I can also fix it by applying a
single PTF. And that happens two or three times a year. So instead of
cranking away for months trying to do frequent maintenance, I get the
_same_ result by doing the maintenance once and then a PTF here and
there, which leaves me time to install, maintain, and support the other
26 products I'm responsible for.
</rant>
Regards,
Cathy
Cathy,
If you don't keep current you will not have to make calls to level 1
(at least not as many). Then you won't get to be on a first name basis
with level 2 and hear about their family problems:) GRIN..
The soap opera continues on as the stomach turns.
Ed
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