One Big Time-Saving Network Enhancement In IBM i 7.6
April 23, 2025 Alex Woodie
IBM i 7.6 brings a host of new enhancements around security and database development, among other areas. But IBM has also brought one big new capability to the operating system’s networking environment that will be worth the cost of an upgrade for some larger IBM i environments.
IBM introduced Ethernet Link Aggregation support in IBM i 7.1 Technology Refresh 3 (TR3), which shipped way back in 2012. Ethernet Link Aggregation enables several full-duplex Ethernet links to be grouped into a single line description with a single Media Access Control (MAC) address, which can boost reliability as well as throughput.
The feature has been adopted by many IBM i shops over the years, including managed service providers (MSPs) who host large numbers of IBM i environments on behalf of customers. It was also enhanced with IBM i 7.1 TR6 to provide automatic recovery when individual Ethernet links fail.
However, the capability had one major flaw: In order to add more lines or make any sort of changes to their Ethernet Link Aggregation environment, customers had to disconnect the server from the network.
The good news is that with IBM i 7.6, customers now have the capability to add and subtract network connections without disconnecting the server from the network and thereby interrupting production workloads.
The new capability was warmly welcomed by Steve Bradshaw, the managing director of Rowton IT Solutions and IBM Champion. During the recent “Three Steves” webinar on IBM i 7.6 with IBM i CTO Steve Wills and Steve Wolk, Bradshaw expressed his frustration with the old way Ethernet Link Aggregation worked and his relief with the new functionality.
“It’s the number one reason why I have to bring a production server down, for no good reason at all,” Bradshaw said. “I’m not doing any updates on the application or the operating system environment, or patching, or the Power. I just need to work on the networking elements.
“And now with this ability to change them whilst they’re in use, I can add more cards in, add more ports from a card into a network line, and then just do that in stages, and then do the maintenance work on the switch fabric that sits behind it,” he said.
“It’s a game-changer for me, and I think for a lot of the people who work in managed services and have cloud environments or large environments, this is going to be worth going to7.6 all on its own.”
As Bradshaw hinted, this new feature to add or subtract network elements in a Ethernet Link Aggregation environment is not available on IBM i 7.5 TR6. It was also one of the most-requested new features on the IBM Ideas portal, as we covered at the beginning of the month.
IBM i 7.6 and IBM i 7.5 TR6 both started shipping on last Friday, April 18. You can read more about the new releases of IBM i on the IBM i Technology Updates portion of the IBM Support website. You can also read the IBM i 7.6 announcement here.
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