Hello all,

there are many new features in v5.2. It would be interesting to see some
opinions (maybe build a top 10 list)

-       Open file support
Sorry for St. Bernard OFM.

-       Automatic labeling of tape volumes
Quietly slipped in v5.1.6. Now officially announced. Lets hope
AUTOLabel=No will always be default.

-       Improved firewall security without client-initiated sessions
As in any other software after tons of functionality the time come to
security improvement. Unfortunately only DMZ vulnerability is mitigated
but how to deal with non-servers and especially mobile users is still
open.

-       TSM SAN Device Reconfiguration
TSM has fixed something broken by Windows.

-       Cross-version and cross-patch support
Backups made by ITSM v5.2 *can* be restored using v5.1 client (except Mac
Unicode) - cool as compatibility and God bless the support people.
The server and storage agents can be again at different patch levels (PTF
may even mean maintenance but it is too good to believe in it) - again
hard times when troubleshooting storage agent problems.

-       Platforms support
IBM on the end realized that without software Linux on pSeries is a
miracle. TSM server support for Linux/Intel is still picky.
AIX 5.2 and Solaris 9 are now supported in 32-bit mode. HACMP is at the
end supported on AIX 5.1 (and still not on AIX 5.2)
AIX 4.3.3, Solaris 2.6 & Mac OS 9 are no longer supported (have to use
v5.1 client) and also cannot have Storage Agent.
Windows Server 2003 is now supported but Windows NT 4.0 is covered by
renumbered v5.1 client.

-       z/OS TSM server supports LAN-free
I hope it is clear for mainframe people, for me it isn't.
Can a drive be used by both z/OS and open system or the library drives'
usage is split?
"IBM 3494 requires open system TSM *server* configured to manage drives
for LAN-free clients" - I thought we had this already? Or it means only
server-to-server sharing as in v3.7.



Zlatko Krastev
IT Consultant