The IT Jungle

7 Reasons To Be Thankful For IBM i

November 16, 2022 Alex Woodie

Despite problems around the nation, Americans still have a lot to be thankful for. We have really good schools, a strong U.S. dollar, and a tech sector that’s the envy of the world. And while the IBM i server plays a smaller role in the day-to-day running of our country than it used to, there are still many reasons to be thankful for platform.

IT Jungle will take a break from publishing next week to rest, eat turkey, and think about what we’re thankful for, which definitely includes the IBM i. Thankfully, we have prepared a list ahead of time …
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IBM Debuts GRS, A New Data Replication Service in the Cloud

November 16, 2022 Alex Woodie

If you run your IBM i workloads in the IBM Cloud, there is a new data replication offering available that could help you recover more quickly from a disaster. Dubbed Global Replication Services (GRS), the offering is only available for Power Systems Virtual Server customers running in two IBM data centers at the moment. But IBM says GRS could eventually be used with on-prem Power and FlashSystem deployments, too.

GRS, which IBM introduced in a September 22 blog post, provides asynchronous data replication for IBM i, AIX, and Linux data, as well as failover and failback mechanisms. The offering …
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Security Is Top of Mind at VAI

November 16, 2022 Alex Woodie

Kevin Beasley hasn’t added “security” to his title yet at VAI, the Long Island-based IBM i ERP software and services provider. But the longtime CIO may just yet, considering all the security activities he’s overseeing for VAI’s on-prem and cloud customers alike.

“We’re constantly looking at new things,” Beasley tells IT Jungle. “Obviously, the security landscape out there is phenomenally dangerous. There was a local government attacked here, and we’re constantly working on security.”

The top threat at the moment is ransomware, which is typically perpetrated through email or text phishing schemes. Nearly a dozen VAI customers have been hit …
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Four Hundred Monitor, November 16

November 16, 2022 Jenny Thomas

Next week is Thanksgiving, so today we are giving thanks for all of you. We feel quite lucky here in the Jungle to have survived another year, and are looking forward to thriving in 2023. We are also looking forward to a little holiday break – as I am sure are all of you – so look for Monitor again in early December before we close out for the year. Until then, get your fill of the latest industry news and happenings below, and enjoy a little family (and turkey) time. You have our deepest gratitude for your continued support, …
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IBM Sets Maintenance Withdrawal On Power8 Iron For 2024

November 16, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

All good things come to an end, and so it is with the Power8-based Power Systems machines. With the Power10 machines in full swing, it is no surprise that IBM is getting set to completely wind down its sales and support of these vintage Power8 systems. Sales have been winding down for the past year, and now Big Blue is warning that maintenance services will expire in 2024.

Rather than set a single date for all machines to have their maintenance agreements and support expire all at once, IBM has three different dates on which maintenance will come to an …
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Data Is Streaming Into The Cloud, Including From IBM i

November 14, 2022 Alex Woodie

We are in the midst of a vast migration of data into public clouds, as companies seek to leverage technological innovation occurring in the cloud for competitive advantage. While there are no IBM i runtimes in the public cloud yet, IBM i shops are still getting value by moving their valuable Db2 for i data into the cloud, often using streaming technologies and tools like Apache Kafka and Apache Camel, as well as an updated ETL offering from IBM.

It is tough to understate the magnitude of the transition to the public cloud is having on the $4 trillion IT …
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Court Throws Out Lawsuit From Chinese Power Systems Partner Against Big Blue

November 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It is not often that we get any insight into the geopolitical workings of the Power Systems business that is central to this publication and to all of you who work on the IBM i platform. Often, the only way we learn anything is when two parties sue each other in court. Such is the case with the lawsuit filed against Big Blue back in September 2021 by Beijing Neu Cloud Oriental System Technology. The lawsuit, as it turns out, was tossed out of court last week.

China has presented as many challenges as it has opportunities for all …
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A Few More Power Systems Updates Before 2022 Ends

November 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

It has been a pretty eventful 2022 for the Power Systems line, and Big Blue has a few ends to tie up before the year comes to a close. And that means we have a few more things to tell you here and there.

First up, there is a new feature on the high-end “Denali” Power E1080 server announced last September as the first member of the Power10 family of systems that lets customers mix OMI differential DIMM (DDIMM) memory sticks of different capacities on the Power10 single chip module (SCM) that is at the heart of the system.

When …
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IBM Gives Temporary Reprieve For Power8 Core And Memory Activations

November 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Big Blue is pretty generous when it comes to having features for past generations of machines available for purchase, even when they are two generations back from whatever it is currently selling. But sooner or later, IBM wants to sell the new machines and it stops selling the old stuff. Even if it is only processor and memory activations on machines that are already in the field, which is the easiest sale in the world because IBM doesn’t really have to do much.

This may be the most profitable kind of sale that Big Blue does, but sooner or later, …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 46

November 14, 2022 Doug Bidwell

This week, you will find much to your surprise that Access Client Solutions 1.1.9.1, which was promised for delivery on December 2 back at the NAViGATE 2022 COMMON conference in St Louis, is out a few weeks early. We saw it available and downloaded it on November 11, which means it is a few weeks early.

ACS 1.1.9.1 follows on the heels of the 1.1.9.0 release that came out in April 2022, with mitigations for the Log4j security vulnerabilities. We don’t know the full set of enhancements yet, but this IBM i – ACS Updates page at Big Blue …
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IBM and Microsoft Bring .NET to Power, After All

November 9, 2022 Alex Woodie

Despite initially denying the existence of a project to bring the Microsoft .NET runtime to Power, IBM this week officially announced that .NET version 7 will run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Power. The technology becomes available immediately, although the database driver connecting .NET applications to Db2 for i will take more time.

Over the years, there have been various attempts at getting the .NET runtime unhooked from its Windows roots and replanted on the Power platform, including some targeting the IBM i operating system. In 2011, a big step forward was made with the Mono Project, which …
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Myth Buster: Changing Your HA/DR Software Is Not Hard Work!

November 9, 2022 Ash Giddings

With inflation putting an added squeeze on IT spend, now is the right time to look at potential HA/DR alternatives. But, given its importance, you need to ensure that you are improving your resilience, and not trading off functionality, performance, and support to make savings.

Logical replication, for high availability and disaster recovery, has been the “go-to” technology for many years, and is still very much the leading approach within the IBM i community.

Nervousness about what costs, implementation effort and trade-offs may be required to change HA/DR solutions, means that many organizations simply rollover the status quo. In doing …
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How HelpSystems Became Fortra

November 9, 2022 Alex Woodie

HelpSystems, a longtime provider of utilities for IBM i servers and their predecessors, has been on the security warpath of late, using private equity funding to acquire dozens of security software and services firms. The Eden Prairie, Minnesota, company officially completed its pivot to security last week by changing its name to Fortra.

HelpSystems started life back in 1982 when it was founded by Dick Jacobson, who created the first Robot/38 product. Over the years, the company (then called “Help/Systems”) would expand its well-respected suite of general-purpose Robot utilities, such as job scheduling, backup and recovery, and system monitoring, for …
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Four Hundred Monitor, November 9

November 9, 2022 Jenny Thomas

It’s been another busy week in the Jungle. Even as the year is winding down, there is lots happening around our industry, and we’ve got it filtered down to something more quickly digestible in Monitor. We found a few interesting and fun news tidbits for you, as well as some new resources. We may need to start a podcast section as we’re watching that niche work its way into the IBM i ecosystem. The calendar is starting to look a little thin as we head into the holidays, but we do have a few events left that might be of …
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The Rich Parfait That Is Cloud Spending

November 9, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Most IBM i shops are so used to having an integrated system that runs their mission critical systems of record and some of their systems of engagement and Web infrastructure workloads, too, that they may forget that the rest of the world does not always experience their IT in this relatively monolithic way.

The top 50,000 or so organizations in the world tend to take a best-of-breed approach to every application and its underlying layers of infrastructure, so they have a hodge-podge of stuff. The next million or so organizations have to be more conservative and keep the infrastructure diversity …
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Readiness Assessment Accelerates Moving IBM i Workloads To The Cloud

November 7, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

There are on the order of 120,000 unique IBM i customers in the world, and the one thing they all have in common is that they are absolutely – each and every one of them – unique. There are no two customers alike because they have lots of homegrown code, or a mix of their own code and that of an ISV, or maybe they have a heavily customized stack from an ISV.

We defy you to find one customer – even one – that is running any software from a third party as it is, out of the shrink …
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Thoroughly Modern: Digital Solutions For IBM i And Beyond

November 7, 2022 Marcel Sarrasin and Scott Gingerysty

IT leaders need to develop strategies that address business goals but also look ahead to a changing economic climate and disruptions. Digital innovation (web, mobile, APis, cloud, etc.) is one of the fastest growing areas of IT. And it’s no wonder – taking on these initiatives while using an iterative approach can deliver quick wins and attainable near-term impacts. This allows organizations to invest in ways that are sustainable.

As organizations look to new business models, seeing technology as a way to accomplish business objectives is the right approach. Competition, market disruption, growth, cost optimization and responding to client needs …
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Momentum Builds For Code For IBM i

November 7, 2022 Alex Woodie

Energy and excitement are building in the IBM i development community thanks to Code for IBM i, the VS Code extension that enables users to write and edit RPG and COBOL code in a Web browser. Spearheaded by Liam Allan, who now works for IBM, the lightweight alternative to RDi is approaching critical mass among IBM i developers desperate for something new.

For many years, IBM i shops had few options available to them when it comes to developing ILE applications for IBM i. IBM’s default recommendation was Rational Developer for i, the Java-based integrated development environment (IDE) that …
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As I See It: Second Responder

November 7, 2022 Victor Rozek

If a thousand people were asked to complete the sentence: “The world could sure use more …” they would doubtless come up with a variety of thoughtful and compelling answers. But I’m willing to bet not one in a thousand would say “cockroaches.”

Nonetheless, advances in technology and miniaturization all but guarantee robotic roaches will be part of our supporting cast in what is rapidly becoming a sci-fi-esque future. Apparently, researchers have long had a keen interest in what insects do and how they do it, although one would think what roaches do shouldn’t be much of a mystery. They …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 45

November 7, 2022 Doug Bidwell

Hello good people of IBM i Land. There’s a security vulnerability you need to take a look at to see if it affects your system, and a whole bunch of PTF patches for all kinds of things. Let’s start with the vulnerability, which you can see in Security Bulletin: Zlib for IBM i is vulnerable to a buffer overflow issue during inflate (CVE-2022-37434) and which you can find out more about here.

This is not the same vulnerability in Zlib for IBM i that we told you about last week, so don’t think we are a skipping record here. …
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