Thank you very much for your response. Our historical backups are made through DSS dumped to IBM TS7700 tape library, and the data mainly consists of IMS and DB2 image copies and their unload datasets. We have over two years of license time to use z14 and z/OS 2.5. We plan to restore the dumped data to 3390 DASD through DSS, transfer it via FTP to disk on an x86 server, and then convert this data from EBCDIC format to UTF-8 format. We intend to completely abandon z/OS. However, given the large volume of data, we are concerned about whether two years will be sufficient to complete this migration.
We are looking for a supplementary solution to continue our data transfer in case the z14 is no longer available. I do not fully understand Linux 1. Can Linux directly connect to TS7700, TS7600, and 3390 DASD ? Is Linux 1 restricted to connecting only to Linux-formatted DASD? Can Linux 1 handle the conversion from EBCDIC to UTF-8? I remember many years ago purchasing an IBM zVDT to install on x86 for $1000 per year. Does IBM still offer this option? Is there another solution to solve our problem? Thank you very much. Jason Cai On Tue, 11 Jun 2024 14:50:39 -0400, Tony Harminc <[email protected]> wrote: >On Tue, 11 Jun 2024 at 13:58, Jason Cai <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Our organization's z mainframe has reached the end of its hardware service >> life and is no longer capable of running z/OS. However, we have a LinuxONE >> machine that remains operational. >> >> We possess historical data backups from our z/OS environment that we need >> to access. To address this, we are considering the installation of the >> Hercules emulator on our zLinux environment. Our goal is to utilize >> Hercules to emulate the z/OS necessary to access our backup data sometime. >> > >Hercules does not emulate *any *operating system. Hercules emulates *hardware >*from the S/370 all the way to zArch family. > >You would need to run an operating system under Hercules, no matter what >host platform (from Rasberry pi to Linux 1 and pretty much everything in >between) Hercules is running on. > >Even if it might work, you can't run z/OS for this purpose for IBM >licensing reasons. > >Could you please advise on the feasibility of this approach? Specifically, >> we are interested in understanding: >> >> 1. The compatibility of Hercules with zLinux on a LinuxONE machine. >> > >It should run, but probably hasn't been tested. > >2. Any known limitations or considerations we should be aware of when using >> Hercules for this purpose. >> > >Many... > > >> 3. The steps required to set up Hercules in a zLinux environment to access >> z/OS backup data. >> > >Again, you need an operating system, and presumably some application >program(s) that understand the format of your backup data. What format is >this historical data in? Backups on disk or (virtual?) tape? Made by what >program? Or is the historical data as-it-was on physical disks that were >attached to your former z/OS on an obsolete zArch machine and are now >attached to your Linux 1 box? In that case, what kind of disks, and what >kind of datasets? > >Depending on answers to the above, it is just faintly possible that you >could run MVS 3.8 in this environment, and use its understanding of IBM >disk geometry (limited 3390 support has been added by user mods) and access >methods to read the data. But there is still the question of what >application programs would read and interpret this data, whether they would >work on an old 24-bit MVS, and whether they too would have licensing issues. > >Without further information I would guess that writing new code in a modern >language to run directly under Linux on your Linux 1 machine and interpret >your historical data would be the best approach. > >Tony H. > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
