Hey Allen,

I have your phone (from Oxford);  still OWE you , big time;  let me know where 
to send you (at least) the donera that was on it, and if you want the phone 
back!  Contact me off the list (please), with your addr, eh!?!

The ISC-AC still sucks (at its latest 5.3.2.0 release, I had some difficulty 
with health-monitor, but fixed it -- the part that sets me "off" now is the 
maint. plan;  it forced and re-forced the "parallel" copy-pools when what I 
wanted was to merge two primaries into a single, offsite copy-pool --  sigh:).  

Maybe you're right;  TSM is too diverse in its installed environments and the 
admins that support it.  But, I gotta say, the old GUI was fine (for some 
tasks), just needed some minor improvements --- like quit collapsing the whole 
tree of policy constructs, so I can change more than one MC without 7 
mouse-clicks.  The IDEA is good, to get a single interface to multiple TSM 
servers, but it sure loses something in the translation to implementation... 
not to mention the Websphere issues you mention!

Best regards,
Don

Don France
email:  don_france at att_dot_net





-------------- Original message from "Allen S. Rout" <asr AT UFL DOT EDU>: 
-------------- 


> >> On Fri, 3 Mar 2006 14:28:06 -0500, Richard Mochnaczewski 
> said: 
> 
> 
> > I had some problems with the setup of the Admin Console. I placed a 
> > call with IBM, [...] 
> 
> 
> The ranting about the ISC was legion in Oxford, and clearly a source 
> of frustration for the IBMers there; there were many questions or 
> "I-want" type statements which were answered with "We're doing that in 
> the Admin Console". It's clear that they've placed a lot of effort 
> and thought into the AC design. 
> 
> I'm starting to think that we, TSM admins, are just too varied a bunch 
> to have our needs met within the constraints of one such system and 
> the ideology that must be imposed with it. Maybe IBM can just ditch 
> the GUI idea entirely, and leave the market to the 3rd party tools. 
> Or maybe they can ditch the idea that the GUI is 'full featured', and 
> deploy something intended to coddle folks who are never going to make 
> the effort, and omit the hard bits. 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm in sympathy with the desire to web-ify many administrative aspects 
> of many IBM tools under a unified umbrella. But the One Ring to Rule 
> Them All attitude has well-documented failure modes, and nobody wants 
> to be Sauron at the end. 
> 
> It gets worse when the One Ring is as (pardon me) shaky and 
> unmaintainable as Websphere. We've had deep, deep _DEEP_ problems 
> with that product. A low point was when a level 2 tech in all 
> seriousness told us he wasn't sure the product supported HTTP. 
> 
> No, really. I can't make that up. Our tech replied that maybe they 
> should change the product name to just "Sphere". 
> 
> I've been through the AIX install of the ISC and AC on a disposable 
> LPAR several times now; even with a fresh clean box and support on the 
> line, we've not been able to get a working console up, which I find 
> more amusing than irritating, any more. 
> 
> 
> 
> - Allen S. Rout