We've done a whole lot of ServerPacs over the years. In every case up to now, we've done full replace (FSR) even though we have a perfectly usable set of 'operational data sets' in every sysplex that we end up using anyway as we migrate across the Enterprise. One reason for FSR is that it's kind of comforting to know that any previous sins (commission or omission) will get washed away in a fresh ground-up install. That comfort level comes at the price of creating a number of throw-away data sets like SPOOL, RACF, PAGE, etc. that we never intend to use. We minimize those data sets and selectively skip jobs that prepare them as SOP.
I've come back from SHARE more than once with the ambition to try software upgrade (SU). I'm all ready to shift gears for 2.1 except for one sticking point. We depend heavily on a brand new level-specific catalog not just during ServerPac install but throughout the life of the z/OS release. That is, a data set created on sysres looks like this: SYS1.library SMP/E finds SYS1.library via the name OSRnn.SYS1.library, where OSRnn is a master catalog alias that points to MVSRnn.ICF.MASTER (our name), a user catalog created during FSR of release nn. Only the driving system needs this user catalog for maintenance and migration purposes because in production, sysres data sets are cataloged directly in master as SYS1.library . So here's the question. Having never gone the SU route, I don't know whether it will yield the expected MVSRnn.ICF.MASTER . If so, I'm off to the races. (Too late to enter Triple Crown.) Otherwise having to rework a number of tried-and-true processes would surely be more work than tweaking FSR yet again, a task we have practiced many times. So the 64 dollar question: does SU create an OS-level specific user catalog that we can continue to use for the life of the release? . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 626-302-7535 Office 323-715-0595 Mobile [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
