John Eells
2018-03-26 17:03:11 UTC
Perhaps some of you recall this from last October. If you missed it in
the announcement:
"IBM plans to discontinue delivery of z/OS platform products and service
on magnetic tape on July 1, 2018. This fulfills the statement of
direction in Software Announcement A17-0134, dated February 21, 2017.
IBM recommends downloading products and service over the internet.
However, if you have a requirement for physical media, products and
service remain available on DVD."
John Eells wrote:
<snip>
How are you going to handle the orders for Tapes? Our installation
does not have *ANY* internet connection from the M/F. AFAIK that will
never change. The place is hyper about security. I think its
overblown, but the current upper management says NFW. When they say no
they mean no. Myself I am happy with tape, I don’t have to worry about
the SMPE creating datasets all over the place and having 5 volumes(or
more) for simple maintenance.
In addition to what I wrote above, we, like everyone else, are driven by
client behaviors and available technologies. So let's talk about
numbers for a minute.
As of this March, 86% of our orders are being downloaded, and every time
we get new numbers that percentage goes up. Of the remainder, the last
year I pulled numbers to break down DVD vs. tape, about 2/3 of orders
delivered on physical media were on DVD. That was a couple of years
ago. If I extrapolate the trend we saw then, that 1/3 of the remainder
is probably more like 1/6 today.
In other words, tape orders are dwindling, and not slowly.
At some point, we will almost certainly drop tape support for software
delivery. It seems very likely to me that we simply will not be able to
justify replacing the tape drives in the distribution centers once our
current tape drives reach end of life.
I hope nobody finds this surprising. We have, for example, discussed
this before in IBM-MAIN.
In a future without tape, if you do not have optical drives and cannot
connect to the Internet, you will need to take a laptop outside the
firewall, download your order, bring it back in, and upload it to your
z/OS system. This is already supported and documented, and has been for
well over a decade now.
the announcement:
"IBM plans to discontinue delivery of z/OS platform products and service
on magnetic tape on July 1, 2018. This fulfills the statement of
direction in Software Announcement A17-0134, dated February 21, 2017.
IBM recommends downloading products and service over the internet.
However, if you have a requirement for physical media, products and
service remain available on DVD."
John Eells wrote:
<snip>
The problem everyone has with physical media is being able to ship
something compatible with what people have today, and will continue
to have tomorrow. Our tape drives cartridge formats are not, as far
as I know, readable by other manufacturer's tape drives these days.
(3480 was the last interoperable format.)
On the workstation front, optical drives are falling out of favor on
new machines. I personally want to stay away from USB memory sticks,
and a number of very security-conscious clients do not allow their
use at all. They disable USB ports entirely, which precludes all
things that are USB-attached and not just memory sticks. We're
starting to run shy of things we can send everyone that will remain
usable for the foreseeable future.
It's this, really, that might drive us toward Internet-only delivery
at some future point.
John Eells
z/OS Platform Installation Strategy
John,something compatible with what people have today, and will continue
to have tomorrow. Our tape drives cartridge formats are not, as far
as I know, readable by other manufacturer's tape drives these days.
(3480 was the last interoperable format.)
On the workstation front, optical drives are falling out of favor on
new machines. I personally want to stay away from USB memory sticks,
and a number of very security-conscious clients do not allow their
use at all. They disable USB ports entirely, which precludes all
things that are USB-attached and not just memory sticks. We're
starting to run shy of things we can send everyone that will remain
usable for the foreseeable future.
It's this, really, that might drive us toward Internet-only delivery
at some future point.
John Eells
z/OS Platform Installation Strategy
How are you going to handle the orders for Tapes? Our installation
does not have *ANY* internet connection from the M/F. AFAIK that will
never change. The place is hyper about security. I think its
overblown, but the current upper management says NFW. When they say no
they mean no. Myself I am happy with tape, I don’t have to worry about
the SMPE creating datasets all over the place and having 5 volumes(or
more) for simple maintenance.
client behaviors and available technologies. So let's talk about
numbers for a minute.
As of this March, 86% of our orders are being downloaded, and every time
we get new numbers that percentage goes up. Of the remainder, the last
year I pulled numbers to break down DVD vs. tape, about 2/3 of orders
delivered on physical media were on DVD. That was a couple of years
ago. If I extrapolate the trend we saw then, that 1/3 of the remainder
is probably more like 1/6 today.
In other words, tape orders are dwindling, and not slowly.
At some point, we will almost certainly drop tape support for software
delivery. It seems very likely to me that we simply will not be able to
justify replacing the tape drives in the distribution centers once our
current tape drives reach end of life.
I hope nobody finds this surprising. We have, for example, discussed
this before in IBM-MAIN.
In a future without tape, if you do not have optical drives and cannot
connect to the Internet, you will need to take a laptop outside the
firewall, download your order, bring it back in, and upload it to your
z/OS system. This is already supported and documented, and has been for
well over a decade now.
--
John Eells
IBM Poughkeepsie
***@us.ibm.com
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John Eells
IBM Poughkeepsie
***@us.ibm.com
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