Thomas, I hear your frustration, and I am very sorry that you are having these problems. We are well aware of the issues involving code quality and support response times, and are continually working on ways to improve in these areas. I understand that that doesn't do anything for you now, but I mention it only to point out that we are not oblivious. One thing I can assure you of with 100% certainty is that you were not lied to with regard to the APAR match. That is not our policy, and no one I know in support (including the person working on your PMR) would engage in such conduct.
I am going to forward your note to support management. At the same time, if you are not already doing so, you should engage your IBM account rep, as the nature and scope of these issues is beyond our ability to resolve on this forum. Regards, Andy Andy Raibeck IBM Software Group Tivoli Storage Manager Client Development Internal Notes e-mail: Andrew Raibeck/Tucson/IBM@IBMUS Internet e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (change eye to i to reply) The only dumb question is the one that goes unasked. The command line is your friend. "Good enough" is the enemy of excellence. Thomas Denier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01/31/2003 09:51 Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: Subject: TSM support issues We have a 4.2.3.2 TSM server running under OS/390. We expect to add more TSM clients, and the workloads on two other mainframe applicatios are increasing. The mainframe is already short of real memory, and is heading rapidly for shortages of CPU capacity and network bandwidth. One of the options being discussed is moving the TSM server to AIX. At least one manager has argued that we should consider migrating to a different enterprise backup solution. One of his arguments is that we are getting poor quality code and poor support. We have been struggling with one or more memory leaks for a couple of months. Patch level upgrades have improved performance somewhat, but have not fixed the problem. We are still finding it necessary to restart the TSM server twice a day to maintain acceptable performance. Back when we decided to upgrade to the 4.2.3.2 level I went to the anonymous FTP server and found a text file referring me to the TSM server README for information on a password protected FTP server. The information was not in the README file, so I sent out a query on this list and opened a severity 2 incident with IBM/Tivoli. I started getting responses from the list in a couple of hours. IBM/Tivoli finally saw fit to contact me after five days. We have since opened another serverity 2 incident for the apparent memory leak. It has typically taken days of repeated calls to get administrative responses, such as confirmation that dumps were received. It took weeks to get a substantive technical response. We were recently told that our symptoms match open APAR PQ69840. I got a copy of the APAR description. The alleged match is so poor that I am struggling to convince myself that the claim was a mistake and not a deliberate lie. I welcome any suggestions for rebutting the argument that it is time to look for a product with better code and better support.