I think that you are missing the fact that you can VERY easily add GRS ring via a couple of really inexpensive FICON cards. You may already even have them just sitting there unused on your processor. In any case, you can buy them even on eBay now for next to nothing.
The GRS ring (not star) for a small site with 3 LPARs should have no problem with any slowdowns, and it will allow you to run fully shared PDS/e, catalogs, etc. I support several sites that I converted to GRS ring (some from MIM, some from nothing at all) on everything down to a really small z13s (~80 mip) and there was no decrease in performance, and in fact, things got better since now GRS was handling things instead of reserves. In any case, NOT sharing DASD on the same processor complex is quite silly and makes life much harder for the users and for you to support it. It's really simple to set up, and GRS is free, so your only cost is the FICON cards. (I think the last place I upgraded ended up paying $500 each and got 3 even though we only needed two). If you need help setting it up, feel free to contact me and I'll help you through it. Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
