Hi, We actually helped 4 of our clients in 2016 replace their z8xx boxes with brand new z13s's (which start out at 10MSU), we did experience a problem dealing with Software AG at two of the sites (they go by MSU as well, but they don't use IBM's MSU's), but they came around in the end at both sites.
IBM offered EGO pricing on the box (for 3 years) and at two of the sites, the reduction in pricing (and the fact that we could replace some non-IBM software with IBM's at the EGO price) meant that they actually saved money (a lot of it), over the course of the 3 years which they would have otherwise had to spend should they have tried to keep their old box(es) or go with their original choice (3 wanted z/114's and one wanted a z/10). There were some issues with ESCON (the z13s doesn't support it), but in all cases the DASD they already had supported FICON already, and one of them had a converter and another had some older ESCON tape drives, but they decided to move to Virtual Tape (from Optica in the end and they threw in a convertor for them to use for as long as they needed to) so now they have no "real" drives. I think that all 4 sites will probably stick with these boxes for a number of years, and they are fairly well "future proofed" with that model. Two have since upgraded to zOS 2.1 and 2.2, and the other two are still running 1.13, but have plans to upgrade in the next few months. All 4 were installed with the assumption that they would be upgrading to zOS v2, (there are ways to make the 2nd jump much easier, i.e. under 30 days, but htat's not your question here) Unless there is something really compelling for the site in going with the z/10, you would most likely be much better off with a z13s. If you think the "other" software vendors will decrease the cost, you shouldn't really count on it. While in most cases the existing software vendors did reduce a bit, it wasn't anything worth writing about. CA mostly just called it a wash, and said they wouldn't increase for the more "efficient" CPU, but some of the others lowered prices by 5% or less. The conversion to the z13 was slightly complicated at 3 of the sites (they were running zOS 1.4, 1.6 and 1.7 and only 1 was running 1.13), the conversion went very quickly, (although in two steps), the first step was to install and upgrade them to 1.13 (that's the lowest that the z13s supported, although we later found that not to be entirely true), and the second was to move them from the old z/8xx to the z13s. The first step took about 70 to 90 days from start to finish, mostly because of the lack of personnel to conduct user testing, the second step took an hour. I think one of the sites took a few hours, but it wasn't anything major. If you want to discuss the steps, just contact me offline. Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
