Timothy Prickett Morgan
-
Little Linux Pricing On Big Power Systems Iron
October 14, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIn case you haven’t noticed, IBM thinks that getting customers to put their Linux workloads onto Power Systems is going to reverse the sales decline for the platform. That decline has more to do with all flavors of Unix falling out of favor compared to Windows and Linux in the data centers of the world with the exception of very large workloads, usually databases, and the relatively high prices that Unix system vendors charge for their iron.
In a way, Unix is the new proprietary platform and Linux is the lower-priced upstart, echoing the situation when Unix first became tame
-
Admin Alert: A Primer For Setting Up PC5250 SSL Connectivity, Part 1
October 9, 2013 Joe Hertvik
… Read moreTo better secure your IBM i Access for Windows connections (Access for Windows), you may be required to encrypt your PC5250 Telnet sessions using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. If you need SSL encryption for your PC5250 setups, here’s a primer for setting up your IBM i and PC clients to communicate via SSL certificates.
The Overview
Setting up Telnet SSL connectivity between your PCs and your IBM i partition requires you to perform the following configuration steps in your IBM i Digital Certificate Manager (DCM), your network, and on your PCs running IBM i Access for Windows.
On your
-
Anita’s SQL Tips
October 9, 2013 Ted Holt
… Read moreI derive great satisfaction when something I say benefits someone else. Call me selfish, but I derive as much or more satisfaction when something someone else says benefits me. A case in point occurred when I spoke about SQL recently at the COMMON 2013 Fall Conference and Expo in St. Louis. Anita Corcoran, of StoneMor Partners, in Levittown, Pennsylvania, greatly honored me by coming to hear what I had to say. She shared an SQL tip that I had seen before and forgotten. Today I pass along to you that tip and a few other tips she emailed me.
1.
-
Open Access Handles The Queue
October 9, 2013 Jon Paris
… Read moreNote: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.
In my previous tip I introduced you to an RPG Open Access (OA) handler that facilitated writing to a data queue using conventional WRITE operations. As you saw, from the programmer’s perspective they were writing to a disk file. The only difference was that the F-spec included the HANDLER keyword to instruct RPG that the handler was to perform all of the actual I/O operations. This time I am going to describe its companion handler–one that reads from data queues.
Design Considerations
When we write a program that
-
Disk Array Revenues Drop For The Second Quarter In A Row
October 7, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreDisk array makers are trying to make it up in volume, and they are not succeeding. This is the second quarter in a row that revenues have fallen.
According to the latest statistics from IDC, disk array storage capacity shipments were up 21.5 percent in the second quarter ended in June, to a total of 8.2 exabytes. This disk array market was able to grow capacity shipments by between 30 and 40 percent a year, which kept revenues growing. But with thin provisioning, data compression, virtualization, and other technologies being more widely deployed on arrays, it is getting harder
-
IBM Gives Away Storwize V3700 Advanced Software Features
October 7, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIf you are looking to install IBM‘s Storwize V3700 storage arrays, which are compatible with the IBM i -Power Systems platform and which are also the storage devices at the heart of the PureSystems modular systems, then IBM has a deal for you.
In announcement letter 313-094, IBM is putting out the System Storage V3700 Advanced Function offering, and this gives customers who buy a minimum hardware configuration some freebie software that runs on the arrays. Specifically, you have to buy a dual-controller version of the V3700 array and a minimum of a dozen disk drives or flash
-
Take A Look At The New
October 7, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreEnterpriseTech Site
As most of you know, I have almost always had two different writing jobs. Sometimes I manage multiple publications at the same company, such as I did for several years at Midrange Computing or later at IT Jungle. Sometimes I work for two different companies, as I have done for the past five years with my job here as editor of The Four Hundred and over at The Register as systems editor.
I do this for professional as well as economic reasons, because one job always informs what I am writing in the other. And, to be
-
IBM Readying Power Systems, PureSystems For Cloud Push
October 7, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt’s the fall, and more importantly, it is the beginning of the fourth quarter. And historically, that usually means that IBM is gearing up to make some announcements. As it turns out, this is precisely the case, and Big Blue is getting ready to make a slew of systems announcements–at least judging by the lineup for top executives that are hosting a webcast scheduled for this week.
The webcast, which you can register for here, will be hosted on the morning of October 8 and is meant to also be timed to an event that CEO Ginni Rometty and
-
Q&A With Doug Balog, Power Systems GM
October 7, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreQ&A With Doug Balog, Power Systems GM
Doug Balog took over as general manager of the Power Systems division this past summer after having run IBM‘s System z mainframe business for a little more than a year. Balog has been in charge of development for the System x, BladeCenter, and TotalStorage disk arrays before that, and in fact he cut his teeth at Big Blue three decades ago working on chips for the System/390 mainframes and eventually was put in charge of OS/390 systems software development as the 1990s came to a close.
To say that Balog has a
-
Proprietary Machines Show Some Growth In Q2, Says Gartner
September 30, 2013 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIt is tough out there in ServerLand these days, and if you need to add capacity to your systems or get whole new systems, you can probably get some pretty eager salespeople to come and visit you. While the situation is not nearly as bad as during the Great Recession, the server market is itself in recession, as the latest numbers from Gartner show.
In the second quarter ended in June, the pattern is much as we have seen for the past several years. X86 systems squeak out some growth, the RISC/Itanium Unix market declines, and mainframes do their ups