iTera Goes XSM with Echo2
by Alex Woodie

At the turn of the millennium, a young company called iTera took a chance on an unproven IBM technology called remote journaling to build its OS/400 high availability solution upon. That gamble paid off handsomely, and iTera has enjoyed tremendous success over the last couple of years. Last week the growing company unveiled support for another promising high availability technology developed by IBM called Cross Site Mirroring (XSM), but can iTera recreate the magic a second time? READ MORE >

EMC Adds iSeries Support to VTL
by Alex Woodie

You can put one more name on the list of vendors offering virtual tape libraries (VTLs) for the iSeries server: EMC. Yesterday the storage and software giant announced that it's now supporting the iSeries with its Clariion Disk Library, a VTL solution based on its popular midrange Clariion storage array. The company also unveiled a new entry-level edition of the Clariion Disk Library that scales from 4TB to 24TB, and starts at $50,000. READ MORE >

Lawson Turns to Services as Part of Java Conversion Planning
by Dan Burger

With its LSF 9 (Lawson System Foundation) enterprise software for iSeries customers at least six months from general availability, Lawson Software switched its emphasis from software to services last week at its annual user group conference. However, the iSeries customers were likely to be more interested in Lawson's long-term plans for replacing its RPG-based software with a Java-based, platform-agnostic alternative and the possible upgrade paths that move is going to present. READ MORE >

CCSS Boosts Visibility of BRMS Restricted State Backups
by Alex Woodie

OS/400 shops looking to get a better handle on their restricted state backups may want to check out the latest release of QMessage Monitor, a systems management tool from CCSS. Typically, administrators and operators lack control over OS/400's Backup & Recovery Media Services (BRMS) when it's running in restricted state mode. CCSS addressed this problem by enabling QMessage Monitor to monitor messages and to issue commands to BRMS running in a restricted state. READ MORE >