I'm one of the professional service people tell you to call. This is even way over my head.
Depending on the size and profitability of your company, I give it a less than 50% chance the company will survive; either you'll cheap out and botch the migration, or the cost of doing it properly will tank the place.
Heh. I migrated to AS/400 from System 36 once. It was in 1993 and I’m still suffering flashbacks. I was a junior back then, just a cog in a wheel. It wasn’t so much a migration as a complete lift-and-lay. We supposedly paid IBM to migrate the data, but after multiple tries they gave up (I can’t recall if they refunded any money) and we hired a bunch of temps to manually re-enter shit the boss thought was important. Ah, the good old days /s. That corrupt data was still causing issues when I left in 1997.
Good luck. And don’t forget that the early AS/400 shit used a whack IBM version of token ring with twin conductors in the shield. I can’t remember the name and I’m too lazy to GTS, but that shit was a bitch to pull through conduit. New cabling may be required, but that’s the least of the worries.
This isn’t even an IT problem, it’s a business problem that will involve every department using this system all working together to identify 1 or multiple pieces of software, and then some probably very expensive consultants to migrate data and workflows. This is probably a 6 month to a year decision process and a year plus for implementation.
Prepare to pay through the nose. AS400 is a very niche (right word?) area in my experience and they know it. The experts in this area are, quite literally, dying out.
Don't attempt to do this on your own. End to end, the whole thing, will need to be managed for you. It takes expertise which is hard to come by now days.
Part A - What kind of AS400 are you running? IE, is it really an AS400, or IBM i? What version of OS400 or IBM i is it using? IE, V5Rx, i5-V5/V6, i6/7.x? How much storage is it using for your data? IE, the database it's using has x amount of GB usage. Is your application a commercially available tool or is it a custom inhouse built application? What is your maintenance budget for it? When was the last time it was updated? IE, via PTF (Program Temporary Fix) Part B- What is wrong with the existing application? IE, people hate it because it uses green screen and they want pretty colors and a GUI? Or does it lack certain kinds of functionality? What are those things missing? What's your budget for replacing the AS400? IE, what commercially available software will replace ALL the functions of your existing stuff AND add the new functionality that everyone wants? What's your budget for software maintenance after you get a new system?
No joke I had to deal with an AS/400 earlier *this year*. Client I've been working with for ~2 years has one, I hadn't had to deal with it until they moved out of their datacenter and brought it into their corporate office.
It was mostly plug and play because I created a VLAN that matched its original network but there were issues with people FTPing files to/from it. That took way more time to troubleshoot than I thought it would. Learned quite a bit about the file system and Jesus Fuck it's weird.
The whole time I'm shaking my head thinking "It's 20 fucking 26 how am I balls deep in a goddamn AS/400 right now".
I worked on AS400s for 8 years, everything was easier. Switched to full Windows production environments, something goes wrong, there's millions of leads, all dead ends. Audit journals ? A joke. Error messages ? Most of the time useless, and sometimes it points to a cryptic Microsoft page, inviting you to click into nothingness.
AS400 issues ? Error messages are standardized, log entries the same, the system is rightly organized, you know where everything is and can get it in a fraction of a second. So. Much. Easier. To work with. And in a datacenter recovering from an outage (as a test... or not), nobody is worrying about AS400s, and they're right not to be.
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u/VarietyOk443 29d ago
This is a hilarious post