We heard via the rumor mill a last summer that EKM support is going away and that we will have to migrate to TKLM or a competitive product in the future. The spectre of this occurring quickly was raised and then dismissed by our IBM team. We are among customers who use EKM for backend tape encryption and are not keen on moving to TKLM since EKM has been free with z/OS and TKLM is priced, requires DB2, etc.
My current understanding is that EKM will continue to be shipped with z/OS but I don't know for how long. I have not seen an IBM Statement of Direction or announcement yet that actually confirms that EKM will be withdrawn. http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/zos_sods.html Like other customers I need sufficient lead time to budget when a free part is replaced with a non-free one even if the current part has some gaps in it's functionality. EKM is not as robust a key manger as IBM TKLM or CA-EKM but it's working today and free. We structure our DR process to insure we have the key data sets we need at DR to recover and resume operation. EKM is a little quirky but it works for now meeting our minimum requirements and it is free. Best Regards, Sam Knutson, GEICO System z HW/SW/Automation Team Leader mailto:[email protected] (office) 301.986.3574 (cell) 301.996.1318 "Think big, act bold, start simple, grow fast..." ==================== This email/fax message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution of this email/fax is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy all paper and electronic copies of the original message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
