Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Update: Weird Volhist Records (Part Two)

IBM did get back to me about my library manager/library client volume history devclass issue and I found it interesting how development handled it. Initially IBM support said the following:

Our server development has confirmed with our design, it is possible that the remote volhist entry can be different. Development believe this is their design. However, the existing document did not document this clearly. They agreed to open a Doc. APAR to properly document this for command query volhist.

In other words they felt that no action was needed other than to document that this possible occurrence within the TSM Admin and Reference guides. So I asked it be escalated since it is definitely a flaw and finally heard back from support and was told the following:

They agree what you observed or reported in this case is incorrect even though it does not cause any function lose. They have agreed to take the APAR IC65048 as a defect ( instead of Document ). However, this APAR would take a big code change to "fix" this issue and after first evaluate, they will not be able to deliver a fix in the service stream. They request to open a DCR ( design change record ) so development can make this change on a release boundary so that there is sufficient testing for a code change.
So it looks like IBM will eventually fix this. Thanks to IBM support for helping me get development to at least go beyond the Doc. APAR.

Monday, December 07, 2009

Data Loss Top 10

Ontrack, which handles data recovery, compiled a list of the strangest reasons data was lost. You can read their list here. I remember when I was teaching TSM some students had some of the craziest stories for data loss (many were disgruntled employee stories).

One story I heard from a student occurred when a manager was stupid enough to fire an employee, but require him to work the rest of the week if he wanted his pay. So the employee worked the rest of the week and on his way out (unescorted) he went into the server room and proceeded to urinate into the mainframe. Supposedly he shorted out the mainframe and caused all kind of havoc. If you have a story you'd like to share feel free to leave it in the comments section.