<quote> any site that has the SMC connected to an external network might want to reevaluate that </quote>
Therein lies the rub. At my site, the dictate has come down from on high (and not completely without merit) that any PC on the network needs to be supported. The SMC needs to be on the network in order for the "phone home" to work. We don't have a modem on our SMC, it is configured to send problem data across the big, bad, internet to IBM. Rex -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of retired mainframer Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 12:15 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: DS6800 disk - was support is ending for Windows XP - Microsoft Windows While the DS6800 has been withdrawn from marketing, it has not reached end of support. Consequently, I am pretty confident IBM will continue to respond to support issues for the entire system, including the SMC, as long as it is their installation. If you install a non-IBM disk drive, I don't expect them to do much. The same if you install the SMC software on a non-IBM platform. Since the principal function of the SMC software is to configure the virtual 3390 drives, once your system is up and running you hardly ever need to use it. I wonder how many sites still have the logon password available. If the CE needs to use the SMC and it doesn't work correctly, the site shouldn't care if the cause is IBM's software or the operating system or the SMC hardware. Even if the operating system was still supported, the probability that the OS company (be it Microsoft for Windows, IBM for OS/2, whoever for Linux, etc) will produce a fix in time to solve the site's original problem is indistinguishable from zero. So it falls to the CE and IBM to come up with an alternate tool for the CE to do his job. Since both the SMC software and the OS have been working successfully for some years and they are not subject to wear and tear, concerns about the supportability of the OS seem to be so much FUD. Since the major portion of XP updates in the past few years have been for security issues, any site that has the SMC connected to an external network might want to reevaluate that. How often, and why, does someone connect to the SMC remotely? What is the cost if that is no longer possible? Why is the security exposure that was fixed on the last update (and therefore in existence for over ten years) suddenly less of an issue than the next exposure that won't be fixed? Has anyone installed malware protection on an SMC? If so, how do you keep it updated? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN The information contained in this message is confidential, protected from disclosure and may be legally privileged. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, distribution, copying, or any action taken or action omitted in reliance on it, is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and destroy the material in its entirety, whether in electronic or hard copy format. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
