We have very few Windows systems so I can't address #2, but as for #1 I
would run one major version behind, at the latest patch level (I believe
this is v6.3.2.200). That way you're reasonably up-to-date but aren't a
guinea pig for the latest major release's new features.

That said, TSM is very stable and I have had very little to complain
about even when I've had to be on the bleeding edge. When we were
building out the expansion to our TSM infrastructure a few years ago, we
debated going with v5.5 or v6.1. We ended up going with v6.1 because we
knew there would be a huge explosion in objects over the next few years
(we were right, too) and didn't want to go through the pain of upgrading
from the old, proprietary database in v5.5 to DB2 in v6. At the time we
estimated a conversion time of three days and now it would likely be
closer to a week.

As it happens, we did end up being a guinea pig for TSM/DB2
interactions, but IBM support was prompt in coming up with workarounds
and patches for any problem we encountered. The cumulative outages we
experienced as a result of those bugs were far less than the outage we
would have incurred had we chosen to convert v5->v6 at some point.

For the conversion costs alone, I would recommend going with v6 now to
save yourself more headaches in the future.

On 11/30/2012 04:34 PM, Welton, Charles wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I have a few questions about TSM 6.
>
> # 1: Is there a STABLE version of 6 that would be recommended?  Right now, we 
> are running TSM at version 5.5.2.0, but we are thinking about upgrading.  I 
> am not interested in getting to the "latest and greatest version".  I am 
> interested in getting to a supported, stable version.
>
> # 2: Based on the recommendation in question # 1, can we run that version of 
> TSM 6 on Windows?  What about a VM?
>
> Thank you...
>
>
> Charles
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-- Skylar Thompson (skylar2 AT u.washington DOT edu)
-- Genome Sciences Department, System Administrator
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