Hercules emulates Mainframe DASD on Open system disk.

On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 2:50 PM Jason Cai <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> 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.
> >
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-- 
Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA
Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all?

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