Eric, If William or you are using HDS disk arrays then you may want to look at using Cross-OS File Exchange (some of you may know this as Rapid Exchange). In simple terms you can share your MVS volumes with UNIX and Windows servers so that MVS flat files can be read directly by the Open Systems servers.
I'm thinking you can restore or copy your tape files to your MVS volumes in the disk array, and the new platform servers can read directly from those volumes. I'm suggesting this as it would get around the clumsiness of double handling intermediate tapes, and it's a damn site faster than using FTP. There are some standard conversion utilities or you can write some tailored programs - this happens on the UNIX/Windows side. Once converted you can change the parity groups to Open Systems format and use the capacity in the SAN, or you may just want to leave the files sitting in MVS format if the ability to read them without a z/OS system is all that is required. Other disk vendors may also have a similar facility, but you would have to ask them. This software works with the SUN and HP brands of the Hitachi arrays. HDS URL is at http://www.hds.com/products/storage-software/cross-os-file-exchange.html. Ron > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Eric Bielefeld > Sent: Friday, 4 May 2007 12:06 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Mainframe Data Center Permanant Shutdown Procedure Needed > > One area that we had a lot of debate on at P&H Mining was how to access > tapes that were saved. They saved a lot of 3490 carts, but had no way of > reading them. They thought of buying a 3490 drive and software to convert > the data to ASCII, but as far as I know, they didn't buy anything. I > think that > would have cost about $10K. > > They also sent a couple of tapes to different places to be converted to > test > out their services. They could convert the tape fairly reasonably, but > what > came back on a CD was useless, as none of the packed fields were readable. > To convert data tapes, you need to supply the vendor with all of the > record > layouts, and they charge a couple thousand dollars for each different > layout to > set it up. > > I don't remember any of the companies that we looked at for this service. > If > you search google, you can find several companies that do that. > > Eric Bielefeld > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
