Thursday, February 22, 2007

IBM Migration Checker for z/OS

Last week I had a post on the latest issue of the z/OS Hot Topics Newsletter. There's one article I mentioned that I'd like to come back to : the z/OS V1R8 migration checker. It's actually a set of bacth programs which you can download from the z/OS Download page. The article gives an overview of the tool, indicates how to use it and what fields it covers. To my knowledge Marna Walle is responsible for the tool at IBM. So I take the liberty to quote Marna's announcement of the tool on the IBM-Main Discussion list : "It includes twelve batch programs you can run to help determine whether certain migration actions will be needed to migrate to z/OS V1.8 on your currently running system.
You can run the tool as often as you like -- on your current system before you’ve even ordered z/OS V1.8, after installing z/OS V1.8, and after each z/OS V1.8 image is deployed into your enterprise. Because the tool does not make any changes to your system and because it is aware of the level of the system on which it is running, it can alert you to migration actions that you should plan for in the future, detect migration actions that you can do now to clear the way to z/OS V1.8, and verify that you’ve done the migration actions correctly when you’re running z/OS V1.8. ".
What's interesting is that the article stresses that the tool can be very useful for other migrations too as e.g. when migration from z/OS 1.4 to z/OS 1.7. The tool will not guide you through the entire migration but it's complementary aid to the z/OS Migration Book of which there's also a PDF version.
Conclusion of the article : "What are you waiting for? The IBM Migration Checker for z/OS can help drive away some of your migration blues. Climb on board!"

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