Concepts for software installation

You and IBM together manage the use, documentation, and transfer of i5/OS™ licensed programs.

Find out the basics of installing i5/OS software: your software order, what to do when you skip a release, software installation scenarios, the types of devices used to install, globalization considerations, and how some conversions could affect your installation time. Following is a conceptual look at i5/OS software installation.

• Software installation process
  The software installation process has three phases: preinstallation activities, the main installation, and postinstallation activities.
• Types of software installation devices
  This information identifies the devices that you can use to install or upgrade an i5/OS release on your server.
• Contents of a software order
  This information describes what you can expect to receive with your software orders and how the materials are to be used.
• Skipping a release
  If you plan to skip a release, such as performing an upgrade from V5R2 to V5R4 and skipping V5R3, you need to be aware of changes from the skipped version and release that could affect your programs and system operations.
• Performance data collection
  With any software release, the support for new functions can cause an incremental change (increase or decrease) in performance for some workloads.
• Mixed-release environment
  Licensed programs or their options do not always have the same release as the i5/OS operating system.
• Software upgrade or replacement
  Use this information to understand special considerations of the server and its software when you upgrade or replace a release.
• Globalization and software installation
  Use this information to understand the basic concepts of installing and upgrading national languages on your server.
• Object conversions
  When you install the operating system, you need to plan time for certain object conversions from previous releases. The amount of time that is required could be significant depending on the number and size of the object types that you have on your server.