This is basically for my curiousity. It isn't going to happen here anytime at all. But I am wondering how the people who do it, do remote sysprogging? Not the normal day-to-day type stuff. I mean things such as:
A problem at IPL. Either the IPL fails or some "problem" (usually ill defined) occurs. We have a VPN and I can get to the HMC to IPL. I can also use the "system console" on the HMC. But this is not optimal. Do remote sites use PCs for their consoles and have some way for a sysprog to do a remote session those PCs (VNC?) (like the PC desktop people sometimes do for remote support)? Hard wait occurs. Usually diagnostic information is on the master console. Use the above where the master console can be remoted into? If the above is used (remote access of some sort), what about the possibility of a "worse case" scenario where the problem occurs when you have a network outage as well? Either at your location, or at the remote location (the infamous fiber-seeking backhoe). I understand redundancy at a remote office. What about at a house? Somebody "has a problem and wants to talk it over". I don't know if this happens much in such shops. Here, there are programmers coming over at least 3 times a week to talk to somebody about something. Such as an ftp problem. Or a coding problem. Or a "can CICS do this?" question. I do know that at my previous job, the programmers were remote, but they had local help from "technical specialists" who were apparently very smart programmers. <remark type="snide">We don't have those (not enuf).</remark> These were just some thoughts as I sit here waiting for an IPL to install new maintenance. I must "do my magic" after the production system (we only have one) is down. I'm using our "sandbox" to "do the magic" because I couldn't afford the DASD to duplicate the RES volumes. Luckily, it is only renaming 4 "minor" datasets (LINKLIB, NUCLEUS, LPALIB, and MACLIB). I did the maintenance the "bad way". I created duplicates on the same volumes, with new names and put the maintenance into them. Yes, this is stupid. No, I didn't really have a choice. We did have a plus of DASD a few months ago. Then somebody decided that we needed a new type of "model office" environment and ate almost all the unused volumes. These same somebodys also want a new set of test volumes for a alternate test environment. Then they want yet another environment called "regression". That is 6 environments: Prod, MDOF1, MDOF2, Test1, Test2, and REGRESSION. And our shop is not that large! Like 50 MSUs total (prox 300 MIPS - the evil word) on a z890. -- John McKown Senior Systems Programmer HealthMarkets Keeping the Promise of Affordable Coverage Administrative Services Group Information Technology This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and its content is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this message and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this transmission, or taking any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
