STL Time Machine Report #40 - Monday 01 March 1999 (1999-03-01)

Saturday I was in all day for testing.  The third-party database 
was finally upgraded to LE/MVS, which has been running in the 
Time Machine for nearly a year.

It looks like I'll be pretty busy for the next few months.  A lot
of different projects are being developed or evaluated right now,
and they running up against hard deadlines for the Y2k freeze.

UPGRADES

It looks like the upgrade from MVS/ESA 5.2.2 to OS/390 2.5 will
happen in Mid-March.  The final CICS upgrades to LE/MVS will 
likely happen sometime in March as well.  I'm expecting a 
mainframe CPU upgrade this summer, and Unix Y2k hardware and 
OS upgrades will be running through July.  We normally do 
application upgrades all year until November, but this year we're 
cutting them off by July at the latest.  For mission-critical
systems, the cutoff is May 1.  No new project installations 
after that date.  

CONTINGENCY PLANNING

I've been in a few contingency planning meetings, and I'm starting
to hear words like "freeze" and "lockdown".  Any changes require
additional documentation and testing to certify that no new Y2k 
problems have been added.  

We're planning our rollover activities and this basically includes 
monitoring all online systems and batch jobs with 24X7 on-site 
personnel.  The monitoring periods cover any dates we fixed code 
for.  There will be full dress rehearsals.  

Since one of the dates we fixed was July 5, 1999, we will have 
24X7 coverage on that date.  That's just over four months away 
and we will be in full-blown contingency mode.  

Our worst case scenarios seem pretty unlikely to me, since New
Year's Eve is normally a very slow time in terms of our past
computing loads.  We believe we've covered the known problems in 
the code.  With all those people on-site watching it, we should be 
able to evaluate data files and handle batch scheduling problems.

Maybe it's overkill.  Maybe not.

As of 1999-03-01, my countdown now reads:

 39 days until 1999-04-09 (IBM Julian date 99-099)
126 days until 1999-07-05 (Contingency plan begins)
192 days until 1999-09-09 (9/9/99 another contingency watch)
306 days until 2000-01-01 (Rollover)
 
Previous Year 2000 Time Machine Reports are available at:
http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/tmr.htm
 
STANDARD DISCLAIMER:  I am NOT an official corporate spokesperson.  
My opinions should not be held against my benevolent employer.

--
Arnold Trembley     
http://home.att.net/~arnold.trembley/
"Y2K?  Because Centuries Happen!"