IBM Clarifies IBM i 6.1.1 And Support Withdrawal

September 29, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The IBM i 6.1.1 release of the midrange operating system that this newsletter is dedicated to was, like many prior releases of the OS/400 and its progeny, a stop-gap release to add support for Virtual I/O Server and was pretty thin as releases go. As we reported several weeks ago, IBM is set to withdraw IBM i 6.1 from marketing on December 9 and stop supporting it on September 30, 2015. But there was not perfect clarity on what would happen to its tweaked follow-on, IBM i 6.1.1.

As we previously reported, IBM withdrew IBM i 6.1 and its related licensed program products (LPPs) on September 9, and because I am diligent, I looked in the IBM online sales manual when I was trying to figure out what the fate of IBM i 6.1.1 was. And here is what I saw:

Yup, that’s two distinct variants of a release with the same product number but as you can see, as far as the sales manual is concerned, IBM i 6.1.1’s future is still wide open. And so I wrote exactly what seemed to be the case. To quote me (which is weird): “It was not clear if both of these releases–IBM i 6.1 and IBM i 6.1.1–were included in the winding down of support, and you might suspect that they are both being sunsetted since, for all intents and purposes, 6.1 and 6.1.1 are the same animal with some relatively minor tweaks. If you drill around the IBM sales manual, however, only IBM i 6.1 is being withdrawn from marketing on December 9, 2014 and only IBM i 6.1 is having its standard service discontinued on September 30, 2015. IBM i 6.1.1 is still an unknown, and if history is any guide, it will live for approximately a year longer.”

Anyway, Alison Butterill, product offering manager for IBM i, sent me this clarification and was unaware that the online sales manual was not correct. “This paragraph makes it sound like IBM i 6.1 and IBM i 6.1.1 are two separate releases and therefore the withdrawal of IBM i 6.1 does not include 6.1.1. Actually, that’s not correct. IBM i 6.1.1 will be withdrawn at the same time as its parent release, IBM i 6.1.”

So there you have it. The sales manual is wrong and to my thinking announcement letter 914-181 describing the sunsetting of IBM i 6.1 should have been more explicit about whether or not it included the IBM i 6.1.1 sub-release as well.

And just to be superclear, I talked about IBM i 6.1 and the licensed program products being withdrawn in two separate paragraphs, and Butterill misconstrued that I might mean these were two separate events and sent this clarification along, too: “When IBM announces the withdrawal of an Operating System level, it includes the Licensed Program Products that are at the same version and release as the underlying Operating System. IBM i 6.1 is withdrawn, so are the Licensed Program Products that require IBM i 6.1.”

I did not mean them to be two separate events, but having talked about them separately, I can see how that might be misread.

As someone who slings words for a living, and who sometimes misses the target, none of this story is me throwing stones in a glass house so much as marveling about the nature of human communication and wondering at its fragility. In fact, wondering that it works as well as it does. Except when it doesn’t.

All Your IBM i Base Are Belong To Us

IBM i Installed Base Dominated By Vintage Iron

IBM Is Working On New Software Licensing Schemes

IBM Lets MSPs Have Utility-Priced IBM i 6.1 For Clouds

Big Blue Backs Off On IBM i Maintenance Price Hike

Big Blue Jacks Software Maintenance Prices For IBM i

IBM Sunsets i5/OS V5R4 Again–For Real This Time

The Carrot: i5/OS V5R4 Gets Execution Stay Until May

The Stick: IBM Jacks Up i5/OS V5R4 Prices

Reader Feedback on The Carrot: i5/OS V5R4 Gets Execution Stay Until May

The i 7.1s Have It; i5/OS V5R4 Extended

IBM Sunsets i5/OS V5R4, Kills Older 595 Iron

                     Post this story to del.icio.us
               Post this story to Digg
    Post this story to Slashdot

Tags:

CYBER-ATTACKS ON THE RISE. PROTECT WITH THE TRIPLE PLAY.

COVID-19 has not only caused a global pandemic, but has sparked a “cyber pandemic” as well.

“Cybersecurity experts predict that in 2021, there will be a cyber-attack incident every 11 seconds. This is nearly twice what it was in 2019 (every 19 seconds), and four times the rate five years ago (every 40 seconds in 2016). It is expected that cybercrime will cost the global economy $6.1 trillion annually, making it the third-largest economy in the world, right behind those of the United States and China.”¹

Protecting an organization’s data is not a single-faceted approach, and companies need to do everything they can to both proactively prevent an attempted attack and reactively respond to a successful attack.

UCG Technologies’ VAULT400 subscription defends IBM i and Intel systems against cyber-attacks through comprehensive protection with the Triple Play Protection – Cloud Backup, DRaaS, & Enterprise Cybersecurity Training.

Cyber-attacks become more sophisticated every day. The dramatic rise of the remote workforce has accelerated this trend as cyber criminals aggressively target company employees with online social engineering attacks. It is crucial that employees have proper training on what NOT to click on. Cyber threats and social engineering are constantly evolving and UCG’s Enterprise Cybersecurity Training (powered by KnowBe4) is designed to educate employees on the current cutting-edge cyber-attacks and how to reduce and eliminate them.

A company is only as strong as its weakest link and prevention is just part of the story. Organizations need to have a quick response and actionable plan to implement should their data become compromised. This is the role of cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS).

Data is a company’s most valuable asset. UCG’s VAULT400 Cloud Backup provides 256-bit encrypted backups to two (2) remote locations for safe retrieval should a cyber-attack occur. This is a necessary component of any protection strategy. Whether a single click on a malicious link brings down the Windows environment or an infected SQL server feeds the IBM i, once the data is compromised, there is no going back unless you have your data readily available.

Recovery is not a trivial task, especially when you factor in the time sensitive nature of restoring from an active attack. This leads to the third play of the Triple Play Protection – DRaaS. Companies have myriad concerns once an attack is realized and a managed service disaster recovery allows employees to keep focus on running the business in a crisis state.

The combination of training employees with secure backup and disaster recovery offers companies the best chance at avoiding financial disruption in an age of stronger, more frequent cyber-attacks.

Reach out to UCG Technologies to discuss your company’s security needs and develop a data protection plan that fits you best.

ucgtechnologies.com/triple-play

800.211.8798 | info@ucgtechnologies.com

^{1. https://theconversation.com/cyberattacks-are-on-the-rise-amid-work-from-home-how-to-protect-your-business-151268}

Admin Alert: What’s The Danger Zone For IBM i Disk Utilization? IBM Rolls Out The Big Power8 Iron

Table of Contents

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search