Happy 18th Birthday, AS/400; Time to Leave the Nest
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

In some ways, it is a pity that turning 18 years of age does not, in some ways, give the Application System/400, which is now called the System i, some rights of its own that transcend that of its parent, IBM. When we turn 18 in the United States, we can vote and we can join the military, but we still can't drink legally, even though a lot of us certainly drink against the law. Maybe it is time for the System i to stand up for itself and, in a very real way, against the way that IT is conducted in the data centers and departments of the world. And maybe in few years, we can have a celebratory drink. READ MORE >

OS/400 V5R3 PTFs Can Corrupt Licensed Internal Code
by Doug Bidwell

Unlike many of you, I spend a great deal of time--some would say an inordinate amount of time--dealing with PTFs for the OS/400 and i5/OS operating systems. And even a techie like me gets burned every now and then. Be careful with Cumulative Group PTF C6101530, which I call "cume" 6101 for short. If you follow the current installation instructions that are online at IBM's Fix Central site, you will be OK. But if you follow the instructions that ship with the PTF order, you could in trouble. READ MORE >

OS/400 Shops Share Their Training Experiences
by Mary Lou Roberts

Last week, I explained that many OS/400 shops are preparing for (if not already experiencing) a shortage of trained resources on the platform. As AS/400 and iSeries stalwarts head toward retirement, and colleges are turning out fewer and fewer students who have experience with much other than Windows or Linux systems, users are looking to build their own RPG programmers and system administrators. READ MORE >

The X Factor: Virtual Server Sprawl
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

It is hard to find a server maker who is not gung-ho about virtualization these days. This might seem a bit perplexing, given that one of the main marketing drivers for virtual machine partitioning or logical partitioning on modern servers is that by carving up a physical machine into virtual, dynamic slices, customers can do server consolidation on a grand scale, and in theory reduce their footprints. READ MORE >