On Tue, 5 Aug 2014 17:42:08 +0000 "Feller, Paul" <[email protected]> wrote:
> We have a configuration of three VM lpars running 5.4. We share RACF > and DIRMAINT across all three lpars. This is a Linux only > environment under VM. We have started the planning of converting to > 6.3. In talking with some people from IBM we have determined that we > should not try to share DIRMAINT between the 5.4 systems and 6.3 > systems. We are thinking about SSI and what it could do for us. We > are looking at how do we migrate to 6.3. > > One option that came up was a big bang approach. The idea being we > create a three system SSI cluster 2nd level and test as much as we > can. Even if we didn't do SSI we would still create all three new > systems 2nd level so we could test the RACF and DIRMAINT sharing. > Then on some weekend during our maintenance window we would bring > down the three 5.4 systems and startup the new 6.3 systems 1st > level. Do as much testing as we can and if nothing breaks move > forward. > > Has anyone tried to do this type of migration to 6.3? Have our > wheels come off the train for even thinking about doing the migration > this way? Although going the "big bang" approach, I believe that it would be smarter to accomplish a one-by-one approach. This obviously depends on how much main storage you have available. There is a number of changes when doing the migration. For me, the most "interesting" part was configuring the FCTC connections in IOCDS. Considering that you already use RACF and DIRMAINT, the new setup will likely be way easier to handle than the three z/VM LPARs you got now. So, depending on your environment: 1. If you got enough main storage, you probably should create three z/VM 6.3 LPARs with SSI enabled and migrate all the guests. 2. If you do not have enough main storage, you might want to create just one LPAR with 6.3 and SSI enabled. Note, that you do not need expanded storage for 6.3 (and its actually deprecated). You can then do all needed tests and afterwards migrate the guests one by one. For this, just define them on 6.3, and after shutting them down on 5.4 its only an IPL on 6.3. Do this until one of the 5.4 LPARs is migrated. This gives you the needed storage to add a second 6.3 node instead of the 5.4 z/VM... 3. If you do not have any spare main memory, you probably should use the maintenance window to do some resizing of the existing VMs to be able to create a new LPAR. Note, that one way of setting up a 6.3 z/VM with SSI, RACF and DIRMAINT enabled is described in "The Virtualization Cookbook for IBM z/VM 6.3, RHEL 6.4, and SLES 11 SP3" http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg248147.html Berthold -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Berthold Gunreben Build Service Team http://www.suse.de/ Maxfeldstr. 5 SUSE LINUX Products GmbH D-90409 Nuernberg, Germany GF: Jeff Hawn, Jennifer Guild, Felix Imendörffer HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For more information on Linux on System z, visit http://wiki.linuxvm.org/
