Hi All,

I hope that everyone is doing well. I need some help with regards to one of my customers.

They are currently running the following on their Power E870 servers: 

1.) SLES: v11.4 (11 SP4) Big Endian

2.) DB2: v10.5.0.8

3.) WAS: v9

They are running a homegrown application on top of the DB2 database.

The issue we have is that Power 10 does not support SLES Big Endian so in order to move the client on to Power 10 they need to migrate to Little Endian.

My question is what is the best way to do this?

SLES v11 does not support Little Endian so we would either need to move the client to SLES 12 or, perhaps, AIX? 
Should I run BE or LE?? What should I be aware of?

As part of the migration we would obviously need to migrate the DB2 databases that are currently running a Big Endian version so that would also need to be taken into consideration.

I really do appreciate any ideas/guidance/support around this.

Thanks so much.

Hi Stephen

I think it would come down to what the homegrown application supports as specified in the link provided. The application is built on a SLES environment which means it has been compiled for that specific OS. In that case it might not be so easy to recompile on AIX. Moving to SLES 15 ppc64le would be the better option. They would be on a supported version of SLES too, seeing that SLES 11 support ended in Jan 2021. 

I found the following link that details a DB2 migration from Z to x86. The process would be similar to convert DB2 from big endian to little endian.

DB2 data migration to a system that has a different endian format than the source system - IBM Documentation

I would suggest setting up a test environment on the Power 10 with SLES 15 ppc64le and test the procedure above. The application itself might need to be recompiled.

Kind regards

Hi All,

I hope that everyone is doing well. I need some help with regards to one of my customers.

They are currently running the following on their Power E870 servers: 

1.) SLES: v11.4 (11 SP4) Big Endian

2.) DB2: v10.5.0.8

3.) WAS: v9

They are running a homegrown application on top of the DB2 database.

The issue we have is that Power 10 does not support SLES Big Endian so in order to move the client on to Power 10 they need to migrate to Little Endian.

My question is what is the best way to do this?

SLES v11 does not support Little Endian so we would either need to move the client to SLES 12 or, perhaps, AIX? 
Should I run BE or LE?? What should I be aware of?

As part of the migration we would obviously need to migrate the DB2 databases that are currently running a Big Endian version so that would also need to be taken into consideration.

I really do appreciate any ideas/guidance/support around this.

Thanks so much.

Hi All,

I hope that everyone is doing well. I need some help with regards to one of my customers.

They are currently running the following on their Power E870 servers: 

1.) SLES: v11.4 (11 SP4) Big Endian

2.) DB2: v10.5.0.8

3.) WAS: v9

They are running a homegrown application on top of the DB2 database.

The issue we have is that Power 10 does not support SLES Big Endian so in order to move the client on to Power 10 they need to migrate to Little Endian.

My question is what is the best way to do this?

SLES v11 does not support Little Endian so we would either need to move the client to SLES 12 or, perhaps, AIX? 
Should I run BE or LE?? What should I be aware of?

As part of the migration we would obviously need to migrate the DB2 databases that are currently running a Big Endian version so that would also need to be taken into consideration.

I really do appreciate any ideas/guidance/support around this.

Thanks so much.

Hi All,

I hope that everyone is doing well. I need some help with regards to one of my customers.

They are currently running the following on their Power E870 servers: 

1.) SLES: v11.4 (11 SP4) Big Endian

2.) DB2: v10.5.0.8

3.) WAS: v9

They are running a homegrown application on top of the DB2 database.

The issue we have is that Power 10 does not support SLES Big Endian so in order to move the client on to Power 10 they need to migrate to Little Endian.

My question is what is the best way to do this?

SLES v11 does not support Little Endian so we would either need to move the client to SLES 12 or, perhaps, AIX? 
Should I run BE or LE?? What should I be aware of?

As part of the migration we would obviously need to migrate the DB2 databases that are currently running a Big Endian version so that would also need to be taken into consideration.

I really do appreciate any ideas/guidance/support around this.

Thanks so much.

Hi Stephen,

I can only provide advice on the SLES portion of your question, based on my previous Power8 and Power9 Linux Experience.

You can see from the below link that Big Endian Linux for SLES 11 SP4 was still being supported on Power9:

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/linux-on-systems?topic=lpo-linux-distributions-virtualization-options-power8-power9-linux-power-systems#liaamdistros__supportedpower8

However, by the arrival of Power 10, Big Endian Linux was no longer supported:
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/linux-on-systems?topic=lpo-linux-distributions-virtualization-options-power10-linux-power-servers

Additionally, SLES 12 SP5 general support ended 31 Oct 2024, with Long Term Service Support Ending on 31 Oct 2027.

Therefore, I would recommend migrating to SLES 15, which will be supported until 31 Jul 2031.

Since you can't run big endian applications on a little endian operating system (i.e., Power8 Big Endian SLES 11 applications cannot run on Power 10 Little Endian SLES 15 OS), I would consult this IBM Developer article for further guidance.

https://developer.ibm.com/articles/l-power-little-endian-faq-trs/

Hi All,

I hope that everyone is doing well. I need some help with regards to one of my customers.

They are currently running the following on their Power E870 servers: 

1.) SLES: v11.4 (11 SP4) Big Endian

2.) DB2: v10.5.0.8

3.) WAS: v9

They are running a homegrown application on top of the DB2 database.

The issue we have is that Power 10 does not support SLES Big Endian so in order to move the client on to Power 10 they need to migrate to Little Endian.

My question is what is the best way to do this?

SLES v11 does not support Little Endian so we would either need to move the client to SLES 12 or, perhaps, AIX? 
Should I run BE or LE?? What should I be aware of?

As part of the migration we would obviously need to migrate the DB2 databases that are currently running a Big Endian version so that would also need to be taken into consideration.

I really do appreciate any ideas/guidance/support around this.

Thanks so much.