• IBM “Harmonizes” Power Systems, Storage, And Software Prices Upward

  November 28, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The worsening economic conditions and the strengthening of the U.S. dollar against other currencies is forcing companies to do two things: Raise their prices in the United States in some cases, and raise their prices a little more than that in Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Japan.

  Last week, IBM did the latter on Power Systems and storage hardware and software, with the price increase taking effect on January 1, 2023. So if you are outside of the United States, you have time to close whatever deals you have in progress at the lower prices if you hustle …

  Read more

• Get Help To Batten Down The Hatches On Your IBM i

  November 28, 2022 John Fehr

  If you have a person on your IT staff that understands the complexities of aggressive malware, ransomware, viruses, and other kinds of hacking and is actually jazzed by this sort of thing – in a good way, a white hat kind of way – and who knows how to use security tools and a deep knowledge to defend your IBM i (and probably your Window Servers ) against such attacks, well bully for you. And if they work for next to nothing, you must be living in some sort of dream world.

  For the rest of the IBM i community, …

  Read more

• IBM Alleges Micro Focus Stole CICS Code

  November 28, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week sued Micro Focus over the alleged theft and reverse-engineering of its CICS software that runs on IBM’s mainframe systems. Micro Focus denied the claim, stating it believes it is “without merit.”

  In IBM’s suit, which was filed November 21 in U.S. District Court in New York, Big Blue alleges that Micro Focus illegally copied its IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS software and reverse engineered it to create the Micro Focus Enterprise Server and Micro Focus Enterprise Developer products.

  In its lawsuit, which you can read here, IBM says Micro Focus took advantage of a …

  Read more

• IBM To Stop Unencrypted Fix Downloads In February

  November 28, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We have caught word from the IBM business partner community that starting on February 15, 2023, Big Blue will stop allowing customers to get operating system software patches that are not encrypted.

  The notification, which you can see here, was sent to business partners on November 23, just before the Thanksgiving Day holiday in the United States. Various IBM support methods, including IBM Electronic Fix Distribution (EFD), IBM Electronic Customer Care (ECC), and IBM Fix Central are all affected by this change.

  “Many leaders of the internet industry – such as World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Internet Engineering Task …

  Read more

• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 47

  November 28, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  It is a busy, busy week for the IBM i PTF Guide, folks. So get some coffee. There are a bunch of security vulnerabilities that you need to take a look at, and there are also some recommended fixes that are not included in either the PTF groups or the cumulative PTF updates.

  First, there is Security Bulletin: IBM Transform Services for IBM i is vulnerable to denial of service, buffer overflow, and allowing attacker to obtain sensitive information due to multiple vulnerabilities, which you can read more about at this link. The fixes for this vulnerability can …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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, …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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, …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

• 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 …

  Read more

Previous Articles