Alex Woodie
-
IBM i Finally Gets Native Cloud Backup
October 17, 2016 Alex Woodie
… Read moreOne of the most compelling announcements out of IBM last week was the launch of Cloud Storage Solutions for i. The new offering, which becomes available October 28 with a starting cost of $2,400, will allow customers on IBM i 7.1 or later to back up to 1TB on IBM’s cloud, directly through BRMS. Some may even be able to get rid of their tape drives entirely, IBM says.
Cloud storage isn’t new, of course. It’s not even new on the IBM i platform, thanks to the work of a number of managed service providers (MSPs) who have been offering
-
IBM Rejiggers PowerHA CBU And HyperSwap
October 11, 2016 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIBM today unveiled several enhancements to PowerHA for i as part of its semi-annual Technology Refresh for the IBM i stack. First up is a new Capacity BackUp (CBU) system that will be more affordable and easier to use. The company also announced that it will officially be supporting PowerHA’s HyperSwap functionality on SAN Volume Controller (SVC) appliances, not just the DS800. Cloud-based IBM i storage and Unix-only resiliency features round out what’s new in PowerHA.
IBM is rolling out a rehashed CBU for Power Systems offering that will be better than last year’s CBU program. IBMers say last year’s
-
HelpSystems Adds High Availability After Bug Busters Buy
October 11, 2016 Alex Woodie
… Read moreYou can add one more item to the long list of products that HelpSystems offers: high availability software. Following its recent acquisition of Bug Busters Software Engineering, HelpSystems last week unveiled its new Robot HA product, which will be targeted largely at small and medium IBM i shops that haven’t had HA before.
Robot HA is the new name for RSF-HA, the IBM i data mirroring product that Bug Busters launched more than 10 years ago at the bargain-basement price of $1,300. Over the years, Bug Busters president and sole developer Bruce Lesnick expanded upon the core functionality shipped
-
Big Blue Patches 14 More OpenSSL Flaws In IBM i
October 3, 2016 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIBM i shops that use the OpenSSL encryption protocol will want to know that IBM last week issued program temporary fixes (PTFs) for 14 security vulnerabilities impacting IBM i versions 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3. If you’re running an older version of the IBM i OS, you are out of luck.
Like most modern operating systems, IBM i includes a range of open source components. That includes OpenSSL, which is an open source implementation of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) wire encryption protocols that’s managed by the OpenSSL Project.
As we learned following the big
-
Why RFID Is (Finally) Here To Stay
September 28, 2016 Alex Woodie
… Read moreDon’t look now folks, but some of the big claims that people made about radio frequency identification (RFID) a decade ago finally are starting to come true. For companies in the manufacturing and retail industries, there’s simply no denying the major efficiency gains that RFID projects are now delivering. Here are some of the reasons why RFID is finally here, and what took so long.
Of course, it wasn’t supposed to take this long. When Wal-Mart issued a mandate for all of its suppliers to adopt case-level RFID tagging back 2003, the transition was expected to take about two years.
-
Tokenization Without Technical Expertise? Townsend Says It’s Here
September 28, 2016 Alex Woodie
… Read moreTokenization has emerged as a favorite technique for protecting sensitive data without the heavy performance, storage, and productivity hit that encryption entails. However, implementing a tokenization solution has typically required advanced development expertise, at least on the IBM i platform. Now Townsend Security has introduced a new IBM i-based tokenization solution that it says delivers the benefits of tokenization without involving programmers.
Tokenization is an advanced form of encryption that’s gaining traction among banks, retailers, and payment gateways. The technique works by replacing the value of sensitive database fields, such as a credit card numbers, with randomly generated index keys,
-
Raz-Lee Touts DB-Gate User Stories
September 28, 2016 Alex Woodie
… Read moreWhat would you do if you were able to connect your DB2 for i database directly into another database, like SQL Server or Oracle 12c? That would probably open up all kinds of impactful use cases to support your business objectives without resorting to tiresome file transfers or expensive middleware. That’s exactly what Raz-Lee Security discovered customers were doing with its newly released database connector, called DB-Gate.
In today’s data-dominated world, one would think that big relational database vendors like IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft would have solved the data connectivity issue a long time ago. After all, relational
-
Living With VIOS and Other Tips From A Power Champion
September 26, 2016 Alex Woodie
… Read moreNobody likes VIOS, not even AIX administrators, admits Anthony English, an AIX expert who was named an IBM Champion for Power earlier this year. But with the proper mindset, a good coach, and a few key pieces of knowledge, even career IBM i professionals can learn to get along with the Virtual I/O Server.
There isn’t much clarity surrounding VIOS in the IBM i community. Many IBM i professionals who have spent their entire careers managing disks and storage the old-fashioned way in the IBM i operating system get flummoxed when presented an AIX-based VIOS screen. VIOS is weird and
-
What’s Ed McVaney Up To Next?
September 19, 2016 Alex Woodie
… Read moreIn the IBM i world, no software vendor has found as much as success as JD Edwards. Sold to PeopleSoft for $1.8 billion in 2002 and now a part of Oracle, JD Edwards was the gold standard by which other ERP packages on the platform were measured. Now the principle founder of JD Edwards, Ed McVaney, is involved in another software startup in the Denver, Colorado area called Nextworld. But what does the company do?
That’s a tough question to answer, as the company is still in “stealth mode” ahead of an official launch, ostensibly, at some point
-
The IBMer Who Decoded Bernie Madoff’s RPG
September 12, 2016 Alex Woodie
… Read moreWhen Bernie Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme collapsed in 2008, erasing $65 billion in supposed wealth, the midrange community was somewhat surprised to learn that an AS/400 was at the heart of the operation. Soon thereafter, FBI agents called Rochester, Minnesota, with a request for IBM: Give us an expert witness who can untangle the ancient RPG II code and explain how it works to a jury. That job eventually fell to longtime IBMer Rich Diedrich.
Diedrich had worked in Lab Services since the early 1990s, back when it was called the Custom Technology Center. While Diedrich has expertise in