Ok, time for me to jump in and out... Tom Brennan wrote:
>> I don't know why this concept seems so hard to understand, >Because you're talking about multiple things: > 1) Up-time of IBM online utilities > 2) Reliability of our internet connection > 3) Backup method in case a utility is not available (for any reason) >I agree #2 and #3 are really important, but I think Allan was talking about #1. He also talked about 'brain-dead PC weenies' who take down things in weekends. Sometimes they do that on Friday midday and bring everything back online on late Monday. Grrrrrrrrr. (Ok, that was a bad filthy hobby of them in the past, but now and then they do it again, but at least with a warning BEFORE the time after the Top Brass moaned and groaned.) My big concerns are #1 and #2. Simply if you're down and during an IPL, you need a bread-and-butter PTF to download for resolving an IPL problem. Failing that because big blue is down, we need to backout. Sofar it has not happened to us, simply because we have Plan A, B, C, D, etc., including testing out our Sandboxes and downloading+testing all the PTFs at our pleasant leisure. In any case, we are ready and prepared in case #1 is not true. We have bookies on several places + formats including shared network folders and our own laptop folders. Also we have at least TWO different methods to use Internet to access IBM and other vendors websites as well our own mainframe network. We have also more than one id to logon to IBM's websites, just in case someone is unavailable or his/her id is blocked. Many many years ago I could not submit my SCRT in time! Why? IBM was unavailable. Really! To be fair, during that unfortunate time, we also have network outage here at my work and also connecting from Sunny South Africa to outside world. IBM accepted my excuse, they were aware of major outages over several networks including their own systems. To be really fair, if you missed the deadline of 9th of a month, these days, you still have a few more days to conjure up an excuse why you're too lame to submit a SCRT report. ;-) So, all in all, my biggest concern now is #2. Groete / Greetings Elardus Engelbrecht ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
