Issues upgrading from mixed environment of 6.5.4/5.0.10

I apologize if this has been addressed already, but I was wondering if there have been any show-stopping issues with upgrading from 5.x to 8.x? I don’t anticipate any with the 6.5.x servers (two) but the remaining servers are questionable. I know that we are looking at the physical replacement of several of the machines due to age and limitations, but several are viable processor/RAM-wise. Any assistance/direction would be greatly appreciated since 5.x is no longer supported by IBM and we are on our own with this upgrade essentially.

Subject: Response

If wanting to go to R8 from R5, it is strongly recommended that you upgrade the R5 server to R6.5, then upgrade to R8.

Subject: Is there a particular reason for this?

Are there issues with this? I’ve searched everywhere I can and have not read anything that indicates that this is a viable path or that it is not. I’m curious as to what are the reasons for stepping to R6.5 or R7 first.

Subject: because you might be out of luck when running into problems.

Subject: But R5 is already unsupported version

I don’t see how that matters. What is the difference if I encounter a problem migrating to R7 or R8? I’m still going from an unsupported version to a supported version and cannot get help resovling problems related to R5.

Subject: But the likelyness to run into an unknown one is way higher (and google is sometimes the most efficient support anyhow). - Just my feeling, will be interesting to see how it works if done different, too.