W dniu 28.10.2021 o 16:59, Pommier, Rex pisze:
Radoslaw,
What's wrong with it? Yes, they're 10 years old.
That's really important. 10 years old for IT equipment is like 50 years
old car. Even without notice it is time to migrate.
They're also still working just fine and IBM just gave me 4 months until they
stop supporting them.
No, they gave you 7 years. And repeated the message. I mean announcement
of newer drives. Did you believe newer drives were not to replace older
ones?
That's not a lot of time to get off them - especially with the holiday season
and year end freezes. Usually IBM gives more than a 4 month notification of
hardware going EOS. Yeah, I can get newer drives and media, but ordering,
procuring, installing and testing, and migrating doesn't happen overnight. Not
to mention trying to find the money when IBM didn't give me enough warning to
budget for replacement hardware and media.
Again - 7 years! And to complement - as I said - I'm pretty sure no 1140
drive will stop working just because of date.
Regarding the support contract - the announcement letter says the support contract
definitely changes as of 2/28. I don't have the verbiage in front of me but basically
IBM is saying "we'll support them if we can find parts".
I'm pretty sure about it. Cannot provide more details. Again: existing
contracts will be honored.
Regarding the third party service company, how does that work with the TS3584
and TS1140 transports being the back end storage off my TS7760T VTS? The tape
library and transports are in essence an extension of my VTS. Will I have an
issue with finger pointing when part of my VTS solution is supported by IBM and
part of it by a third party? I don't know the answer to that.
It is matter of your comfort. In the past I had a lot of equipment out
of support and even not under third party support. Not my decision, but
I had to live with that. And it was no problem. Not because nothing
failed, there were some failures.
As far as "very few VTS solutions with real tape drives", well we're one of
them. And now we're scrambling to figure out how to upgrade the library and how to pay
for it.
And this is AFAIK supported way to upgrade. Yes, you have to upgrade -
this is one of consequences of EOS. Don't worry, 4 months is enough time
for that.
(small print: sometimes it takes much more time to organize working
group for such task. But it is not related to tape technology).
Personal opinion: I would really like to still have 3490E and 3590
drives supported. But I don't have such option. I have to move on.
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf
Of Radoslaw Skorupka
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2021 6:42 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: TS1140 tape transports
W dniu 26.10.2021 o 22:54, Pommier, Rex pisze:
Hi list,
Was I the only one caught flat-footed with the IBM announcement today that in
just over 4 months (2/28/2022), they're dropping support on TS1140 tape
transports? Was there an earlier announcement that this was coming and I just
missed it or was this the first notification?
What's wrong with that?
TS1140 is ~10 years old.
There are TS1150, TS1155 and TS1160.
As far as I know. any existing support contract will not be affected by the EOS
announcement. Just no new support contracts for dates after 2022-02-28.
And of course no drive will stop functioning just because of the announcement.
Last, but not least, third party service companies will still support it as
well as older equipment.
The only interesting thing I see here - it is the last native tape drive
supported by z/OS.
I feel like with 3390 - no more drives, just disk arrays and emulation.
And, to complement - there are very few virtual tape solutions with real tapes
on backend. And very few tape manufacturers.
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
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