This is a real pet peeve of mine and I've done a lot of these conversions outside of the "IBM 3 release rule" with no problems. IBM doesn't require you to perform the upgrade in multiple jumps, but a lot of people (even within IBM) seem to have fallen under that misconception. As for "falling back", there is no such kind of maintenance or support. There is coexistence maintenance, but falling back to 1.4 froim 1.9 is the same as falling back to 1.8 from 1.9. Without a plan you will fail either one.
Your conversion should not really present any problems for you. The JES2 exits and TCP changes are probably the hardest things that you will face but neither is overly difficult. My big question is why not go to 1.10? 1.11 will be out in less than 2 months, and since you are going to be getting a z10 you probably will benefit more from 1.10. Since you're not sysplexed or planning on sharing the spool, then either OFFLOAD or NJE is a very simple and safe bet for you. I'm not sure what went wrong on your conversion from 2.9 to 1.4, it should have worked okay. One reason I personally prefer the NJE approach is that you don't have to use tape and it allows you to run in parallel for a while if external pressures require it. The only time I have ever run into a "failure" in a conversion was because of "bad tape". We were converting not only OS's but physical locations FOR A CLIENT and they decided to create "one last" backup of the production datasets the night before the conversion cut-over to make sure everything was "fresh", and the backup tapes were loaded into a car that they allowed the night shift operator to drive to the new site. He had 4 hours to make a 30 minute trip, so he decided to stop off at a bar and while he was inside the company truck was stolen. The person who stole the truck pushed all of the tapes out onto the street about 3 blocks away, but many of them were no longer usable. We ended up putting off the conversion to the following weekend. I have not really trusted tapes or operators since.:) 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
