I would think the 'support' comes down to legal posturing. IBM supports n+2 these days. That means as long as you stay within that window, they work to make sure the three releases play nice together. Go outside that window and they can not be sucked into the lawsuit against you when you you break the system, horribly. After that, you get to choose how much risk you are willing to take. Until you try to run your 'unsupported' configuration and find out if it works or not, there is uncertainty. If you are not doing a push-pull of your processor, and that is a big risk, do some testing. In all the migration material I read, there are frequent references to 'once you start using a new feature, the old system cannot handle it.' It is hard to imagine that the day you cut over you are really implementing new or modified applications using all the new bells and whistles of a system you were not running anyway. Your old stuff still runs the same old way. So as Brian points out, if you do not do that, you can share more than you think. As long as you accept the risk.
Making the leap from 31 bit to 64 bit is not as big a challenge today as it was years ago. If you need to do it, all the vendor products out there are ready for you. Unless you have some obscure vendor who had their head in a hole. Get all the current products and do it. Or bring in someone who has done it. On Fri, 4 May 2007 23:40:28 -0500, Brian Westerman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >ah, again with the FUD. > >There is no issue with sharing catalogs, or RACF between OS/390 and z/OS at >any level, you just can't do stupid things. There are some >incompatibilities with some products, but mostly it's a matter of two >inconsistent versions of products that you can handle up front before the >actual conversion. I never said it was a nit, but it's not impossible nor >is it particularly difficult, you just have to know what you're doing. I've >done it too many times at too many sites and I have not run into any >insurmountable issues with being outside of the N-3 "rules". It's not like >IBM is going to say, "Wow!, you're trying to convert from OS/390 2.10 to >Z/OS 1.8, we don't support that!, You'll just have to go away.", because >they do provide support, they have been from time to time very helpful. I >will admit that I have not had to call them very much lately due to issues >because I've already run into most, if not all, of them and have the >solutions. > >I even had two conversion client contacts in 2006 passed on to me from IBM >support, and those conversions went fine with no hitches. > >Doing the conversion in multiple steps is just make-work that the client >should not have to pay for and that I don't want to have to go through >either. I guess if I was really bored, I might have a different >perspective, but there are too many other interesting things to do without >making extra work for myself or the client. > >Brian > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
