Upgrading z/OS 11 to z/OS 13

dick scherrer · Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2013 1:09 am

Hello,

Has anyone upgraded their system from 11 directly to 13?

Any cautionary tales?

Any showstoppers you've encountered?

Over the weekend, i plan on doing some searching to see if there is a decent cheat-sheet for this.

The folks i'm trying to help are "tennants" and the data center will do the actual upgrade. The intent here is to make sure we have done as much shake-down as possible - especially where there are known "gotcha's".

Pete Wilson · Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 3:26 pm

Ensure you have a backout plan !

DFSMS ACDS gets reformatted from 1.11 to 1.12 I think so might pay to have backups of both SCDS and ACDS pre upgrade.

dick scherrer · Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 8:23 pm

Thanks Pete,

Is this reformatting done automagically when going from 11 directly to 13 or does there have to be an intermediate upgrade to 12 to get there?

I'm sure the data center folks have a plan, but so far they are not "sharing".

So far, i've not found something that will provide "guidance" for those of us who are "users". A couple of times when something like this was done, we found some surprises. In the last 5 years, z/OS has been upgraded from 1.7 to 1.9 to 1.11 and now 1.13. One of the biggest issues was incomplete (or non-existent) testing on the part of some of the tennant users. . .

We're shooting for a more successful implementation.

Is anyone aware of issues with products from other vendors (CA, Syncsort, Compuware, etc)?

Pete Wilson · Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 8:32 pm

Yes, the reformatting happens in the SCDS when you update it from the higher level system with ISMF. If you try and update it subsequently from a lower level system it will warn you it is at a higher level, and you can logon to a higher level LPAR. If you're taking a 'big bang' approach and updating all LPARS in the plex at the same time it's not an issue, unless you want to go back to 1.11 when you might have to restore the older version. Make sure you have an empty COMMDS ready as well just in case as it remembers what ACDS you were on and you might have to do a SETSMS to load the previous version ACDS, in which case you want to do it into an empty COMMDS.

Can't speak too much about the OEM's. I guess the usual cautions would apply, maybe a DUMPQ backup for CA7, and TMC and AUDIT backup for CA1 pre upgrade. Usual stuff.

Has there been testing of all the software at 1.13 on test systems beforehand?
That's usually the best way to flush out any issues.