Alex Leyva wrote:
Hi all, somebody knows whats the diferences between the System Administration Facility and DirMaint? The situation is that the people from IBM told us that they will install it after install zvm, i have never heard about it, i read the info about it and i think that it is a replacement for DirMaint, so i want to know the diferences between both, and the experience of use.
I've never used System Administrator Facility, but I use DirMaint. I don't regard them as competitors; SAF is (as I understand it) a facility to make it easier to manage a z/VM system if you're using it for a few specific things, like running Linux guests. DirMaint is one of the licensed features that SAF assumes is there to use to run the system. I believe SAF is "functionally stabilized." It works, and IBM will try to keep it working, but they won't throw any more money down that hole. They would like all z/VM sites to take off the training wheels and the blinders and use all that z/VM has to offer. For example, I don't know if SAF knows about or supports the new variations on Guest LANs. That's an important technology for Linux shops, but I don't expect SAF to support it because it came out after SAF was finished. DirMaint is clunky at times (I prefer VM:Secure (or VM:Direct) from Sterling, er, CA), but at least it doesn't restrict you from using z/VM any way you think best. Time invested in learning DirMaint is comparatively well spent. You might move this discussion over to [EMAIL PROTECTED]; while it's relevant for shops running Linux on zSeries, it really is a VM question. :-)
Thanks. =-) -- Alejandro Leyva Rabinovich.
Nick
