IBM is withdrawing support for i5/OS V5R3 on April 30, and system administrators may wish to upgrade their operating system version either to V5R4 or to IBM i 6.1.
Users will be able to upgrade directly to V5R4 until 2010, but lacking support for V5R3 could pose problems if their system fails, and IBM isn't supporting their version of the OS.
The upgrade to IBM i 6.1 is considered the most desirable upgrade in order to take advantage of all the new functionality in the latest version of the operating system, but it requires more planning and effort than upgrading directly to V5R4. Some may find they don't have the time between now and April 30 to prepare their systems for 6.1, so a move to V5R4 may be more practical in the interim.
IBM suggests keeping on top of dates when support is withdrawn in order to avoid costly manual upgrades.
"If a direct upgrade to the latest software release is not available, you need to conduct a multiple-step upgrade," says IBM on its Web site. "This requires upgrading to an interim release to enable upgrading to the latest release. If all direct upgrades to subsequent software releases have been withdrawn, there is no supported way to upgrade the system. The only alternative is to perform a labor-intensive manual upgrade, which typically requires hiring custom services."
Here are several links that may prove useful in deciding which upgrade path to take.
http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/i/planning/software/i5osschedule.html
http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/i/library/techoverviews/index.html
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