- Are you running DB2 V4 or lower? Do you know IBM
no longer supports these releases?
- Are you running DB2 V5? Do you know it’s
unsupported as of the end of this year?
- Do you know DB2 V6 can no longer be ordered from
IBM?
- Do you know that DB2 V6 or V7 provides
coexistence/fallback support only back to DB2 V5, and if you’re
running a version lower than V5, you must upgrade to DB2 V5 before
upgrading to a higher version?
- Do you know if you upgrade from DB2 V5 to V7 now,
V7 is available at a reduced price for a full year?
- Then here’s some help in planning your DB2 V7.1
upgrade!
The First Steps.
Once you've decided to upgrade DB2, several tasks
should get started immediately:
- Determine whether to upgrade to DB2 V6 – if it’s
in house – or DB2 V7.
- Construct a project plan.
- Establish the project management infrastructure.
- Perform a survey of all Third Party products you
run under DB2.
- After completing steps 1 and 4, order the
necessary software products.
Release Considerations.
- If you’re running DB2 V5 or lower, you need to
upgrade ASAP to regain or maintain IBM support.
- DB2 V6 can longer be ordered, so if you don’t
already have the product, you need to upgrade to V7. There is no
announced end of support for V6, however, so it will be supported for
another year or more. DB2 V7 has been available since 3/30/2001, with
no announced end of availability or support – it’s the most
current version with the longest life. See http://www-3.ibm.com/software/data/db2/os390/availsum.html.
- DB2 V7 has coexistence/fallback support for DB2
V5 or V6; DB2 V6 provides this support only with DB2 V5. If you’re
running DB2 V4 or lower, you need to upgrade to DB2 V5 before
upgrading to V6 or V7.
- DB2 V7 requires OS/390 V2.7 or higher, DB2 V6
requires OS/390 V1.3 or above; both support z/OS.
- Both DB2 V6 and V7 require CICS/ESA V4 or higher,
and/or IMS/ESA V5 or higher (if they’re used).
- Software costs may increase more by upgrading
directly to DB2 V7 than DB2 V6, both for DB2 and for Third Party
products. This is dependent on the licensing arrangements you've made
with your vendors.
- Upgrading to DB2 V6 means another upgrade will be
needed to get to IBM's most current level, while moving directly to
DB2 V7 accomplishes this in a single step with slightly more effort.
- If a V6 upgrade is already underway, it may make
sense to complete the upgrade, then move on to V7.
- DB2 V6 has been in the field longer, and thus is
more "well-seasoned" code, but DB2 V7 has been out for well
over a year, so both releases have been well exercised.
Start the Project Plan.
While it's too early in the process to develop a
detailed project plan, creating a comprehensive, high-level plan that can
be expanded is possible, and critical. The project plan must be dynamic;
it grows and evolves at least into the testing phase of the upgrade. Start
by identifying whatever high-level tasks you can, assign responsible
individuals to each primary upgrade component, and you'll be amazed at how
quickly the detail blossoms!
A project management tool, with good reporting
facilities, is a must for good project planning. This tool will be the
center of project management, tracking project progress, producing project
management reports, and serving as a communication vehicle between all
project members. Task characteristics that need to go into the plan are:
- Task description.
- Responsible individual.
- Identification of pre-requisite, post-requisite
tasks.
- Determination of cornerstone tasks and mandatory
completion dates.
- Task duration/person hours. These items often can
only be crudely estimated, and should include time for the unexpected,
with a clear communication that they're only approximations.
- Footnotes or other additional task information
(such as references to supporting documentation).
Here are some additional items to incorporate into
the initial project plan so they don't get forgotten:
- Third Party product installations should begin
ASAP; they should be moved to production before DB2 since they're
often pre-requisites, and can comprise half or more of the total
upgrade effort.
- The upgrade should be "vanilla". No
unnecessary changes should be made in concert with the upgrade.
- Make sure the plan includes both procedures to
upgrade to the new DB2 release, and to fall back to the old release if
there are problems with the new release.
- Assume some things will go wrong and allow time
for that.
- If multiple LPARs will be upgraded, create a high
level task for each system.
- Stage upgrades by system, starting with test and
low impact systems.
- Allow time for project management.
Establish Project Management.
- A project plan is only as good as the project
management behind it. The following will help manage the upgrade:
- Identify a project manager to run status
meetings/calls and have responsibility for the project plan.
- Identify a project secretary, who will keep
minutes of status meetings/calls.
- Identify one or 2 IT or user managers who will
participate in the meeting, communicate progress to the rest of the
business, and communicate applications or user requirements to the
project team. Set up formal communications to the rest of your
organization through these individuals, and use it!
- Set up weekly status meetings/calls, with the
expectation that all project team members will participate unless
excused. During this meeting (1) the
project plan should be reviewed, discussed, and updated from the prior
week, (2) review prior meeting minutes
and follow-ups, and (3) new business.
Survey Third Party Product Vendors.
Each Third Party product vendor should be contacted
to identify what product release/maintenance level is required to run with
either DB2 V6 or V7; necessary upgrades become major tasks in the project
plan. Build a spreadsheet with columns such as: (1)
product name, (2) vendor name, (3)
Site ID, (4) vendor phone, (5)
current product level, (6) required product
level, (7) latest product level, and (8)
comments. Columns 1 through 5 can be filled out before contacting vendors.
Order the Software Products.
As soon as the DB2 release and Third Party products
needing upgrades are known, they should be ordered. Installation can begin
as soon as the products arrive.
Researching the Upgrade.
IBM Product Information.
One area that must be researched is DB2. Product
changes, removal of function, enhancements, migration tasks, installation
tasks, application and operations impact, and other aspects must be
researched and understood prior to undertaking the upgrade. This
information should then be folded into the project plan as tasks.
Listed below is a variety of DB2 sites/manuals where
you can obtain information useful in planning your migration. They are
listed in approximate order of value they provide to the project planning
process:
Internal Information.
Information such as prior DB2 upgrade plans, files
from past upgrades, installation diaries, old "control" data
sets (containing customized installation jobs, etc.), comments in JCL,
source, etc., and the input of past upgrade participants all provide
invaluable information that should be used in building your project plan.
Also, research your systems. Browse user exit
source, scan through DSNZPARM, review Startup Procs and related JCL,
verify data set naming and placement, SMP/E setup, etc.; fold anything
relevant into the plan. The better you know your system, the better the
upgrade will go.
Migration Tasks.
Here's a quick list of the most common upgrade tasks
to add to your project plan:
DB2 V6.
- Review and upgrade DSNZPARM.
- Convert Type 1 indexes to Type 2 indexes.
- Remove passwords from all indexes and table
spaces, convert to security subsystem.
- Convert shared read-only databases to data sharing
or distributed data, or drop them.
- Ensure all host variables include a preceding
colon. This had been optional, but now is required.
- RECOVER INDEX has been renamed to REBUILD INDEX.
- Review the DB2 V6 Installation Guide to identify
migration tasks and add them to the project plan.
- Back up existing systems and determine upgrade and
fallback procedures.
DB2 V7.
- Perform all migration tasks that are required for
DB2 V6.
- Install APAR PQ34467, which provides
coexistence/fallback support with DB2 V5 or V6.
- Review the DB2 V7 Installation Guide to identify
migration tasks and add them to the project plan.
Installation.
Assuming the prior steps have been thoroughly
performed, you now have a comprehensive project plan for upgrading your
operating system. While a few problems will still arise, completion of the
upgrade at this point becomes a matter of executing your plan. Good luck!
Disclaimer.
The opinions in this article are solely those of the
author, and the information herein is to be taken "as-is".
