Well, I'll add my 2 cents. As a shop with VM in it for about 20 years, we don't want IBM to put a lot of effort into SAF and such. The first thing we do is pull out RACF and DIRMAINT and put it VM:Secure. We do appreciate the 1 page install sheet though because we tend to do a couple of installations of each release (GA and ESP). Sure makes it difficult when you have customers with completely different needs - which is why there are ISV's! I hope IBM focuses their development $ on making VM the best choice platform for Linux.
I do think IBM should put some effort into making it easier for customers to get from one release to another. The install is only directed at a new system. What I'm talking about is what you have to do once you've got your new system up 2nd level and your old up 1st - how to put it into productions (I'm pretty sure IBM is looking at this;) We've gotten really good at it because we've done every release of VM/ESA and z/VM and we know our system intimately so we know where the hidden bear traps are, but I do notice a lot of people still on 2.3.0 and 2.4.0 and people skipping releases on the VMESA-L. If IBM is going to come out with 2 or 3 releases a year, a lot of people are going to fall eveb further behind more quickly. I was an IBM SE for a while in the early 90s. Remember VM/IS? That was supposed to make it all easy for the customers - anyone could be the sysprog. I had a customer call me in dire straits one day. They had a disk drive crash on a 9370 with 9332 dasd. I got there and found they had been doing nightly DDRs. No, problem, we'll just IPL the standalone and restore that tape. The first 50 or so blocks restored and that was it. There didn't appear to be anything after it on the tape. It turns out that a year ago the "operator" received an i/o error on a certain block and on someone's advice changed the dump all to dump 0-50 (or something like that). Anyway, that command was written down in ops guide forevermore. Reinstall time... Most of those VM/IS systems got replaced by something non-IBM. They couldn't upgrade from SP5 to 6 without an 80 hour service contract so they just didn't do it. They never got things like SFS that could have made life much easier. At some point, you have to take off the training wheels or you will crash on the banked turn on the bike path (yes, I have a 5 year old :). Being new to Linux myself I'm not sure, but I suspect the Linux gurus avoid using yast at some point too... Anyway, I would recommend checking out Share. Martha, Harry, and others have several presentations there geared toward VM newbies. And Lionel, maybe you can get your boss to send you across the bay to share in August! You can say it's Linux ed and not VM (that's what we have to do around here :). Check out the Nashville proceedings on www.share.org. Marcy Cortes Wells Fargo Services Company San Francisco
