Edit: Keep your maintenance current.
Originally posted November 25, 2014 on AIXchange
Recently, a customer was looking for help with their machine, a 7038-6M2 running AIX 5.1.
The customer attempted to call IBM for assistance. They didn’t get very far at first. This machine was announced in 2002 and withdrawn from marketing in 2005. In addition, IBM no longer supports AIX 5.1 or any previous operating system.
As I’ve often said, lots of businesses continue to run on older hardware and legacy OSs. While this speaks to the high quality of IBM systems and software, it’s still a risky venture, because even the most well-made systems will break down eventually.
In this case, the test/dev LPAR wouldn’t boot up once a D20 drawer was added to the system. Luckily, the production LPAR wasn’t impacted.
A bad boot drive was initially thought to be the culprit. Some used drives were procured and one of the disks was replaced. The intent was to boot from the remaining good disk and then mirror to the used drive. An AIX 5.1 CD was used as boot media. While the machine came up, the used disk wasn’t recognized. Was this a firmware issue? Was the wrong part number being used as a replacement?
A different used drive was tried, but it wasn’t recognized either. No one was sure what to try next. Finally, the question arose: What kind of a PMR did you try to open with IBM, software or hardware? Ah ha. The customer had tried to open a software PMR but wasn’t entitled. However, the machine was still covered under IBM hardware support.
Once a ticket was opened, the disk carrier was determined to be the problem. When that part was replaced, the machine was able to boot. One of the disks actually was bad though, so one of the replacement disks was used to create a mirror of rootvg. The system is running fine now.
The moral: If you’re still running old hardware, keep IBM maintenance on it. Or better yet, seriously consider upgrading to something newer.
On an unrelated note, I saw the following from IBM that might impact customers who order physical copies of media:
Under Software Updates: Effective November 18, 2014 customers in the USA who select the physical delivery option will be invoiced 350USD + sales tax for the order. Note that download delivery remains free of charge.
Be sure to give yourself any additional time necessary to download and burn any physical media you might need. Otherwise be prepared to pay this new fee if you still want IBM to ship it to you.