Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Admin Alert: Three Common Problems with CBUs
September 14, 2011 Joe Hertvik
… Read morePower i Capacity BackUp (CBU) systems are complicated critters. Aside from the basic tasks of configuring, testing, and enabling a CBU for taking over processing from a production box, there are a lot of different problems that can occur with CBU configuration, and even when the CBU is running in replication mode. This week, let’s look at a few not-so-obvious CBU configuration issues that can hurt your CBU or production system setup.
Issue #1: Problems with libraries that start with “Q”
By default, many Power i replication packages do not replicate objects in libraries whose names start with “Q”, such
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Now Where Did I Leave That Source Member?
September 14, 2011 Bruce Guetzkow
… Read moreNote: The code accompanying this article is available for download here.
During execution, programs rely strictly on their compiled objects. The source used to create the object is not used in any way for execution. There are, however, some instances where source is of value during processing.
In a source member, one could store FTP commands to be used with the FTP (Start TCP/IP File Transfer) command, SQL statements to be used with the RUNSQLSTM (Run SQL Statements) command, or REXX statements to be used with the STRREXPRC (Start REXX Procedure) command. Knowing where the proper source exists is
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Learn To Debug Authority Failures, Part 1
September 14, 2011 Patrick Botz
… Read moreIt is truly amazing how many IBM i administrators and programmers do not understand how to debug authority failures.
When a user they support encounters an authority failure, many typically do one of two things:
- Give the user *ALLOBJ authority
- Or, if they can identify the object on which the authority failure occurred, they make sure *PUBLIC has *ALL authority to it
Attacking authority failures in this way results in huge security holes. And this practice is almost certainly non-compliant with the organization’s written or unwritten security policy. Further, when the change happens to fix the authority failure, they
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IBM Gives More Freebie Slices On SmartCloud Service
September 12, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreHere’s the kind of deal you never see on a mainframe or a Power Systems-IBM i platform: free server capacity. And it is certainly not the kind of deal you see twice in the same year. But IBM is trotting out another deal to give customers a free spin on its SmartCloud infrastructure clouds, which support Windows and Linux workloads on X64-based iron.
IBM puffed up the SmartCloud Enterprise infrastructure cloud back in April, its alternative to the EC2 compute cloud from online retailer Amazon, which is one of the pioneers in cloud computing. IBM wants to make
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Tape Consortium Makes The Case For Tape Storage
September 12, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreOnline backup and real-time replication of data to the cloud are something that most IT shops and many consumers are looking at these days as the amount of data they are handling goes through the data center roof and living room ceiling alike. But the Ultrium Linear Tape Open (LTO) consortium wants IT shops to remember that ultimately they want to have archives on tape stored somewhere secure for extra redundancy and safety.
Apropos of nothing in the dull days of August, the LTO consortium pointed out two studies that would be useful for IT shops trying to justify the
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IBM Ponies Up $1 Billion In Cost Busters Financing For SMBs
September 12, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWith all the talk about jobs, jobs, jobs–and not just the ailing co-founder of Apple–and people not creating enough of them, IBM, with typical enlightened self-interest, is putting up $1 billion in financing for small and medium businesses to modernize their hardware and software and to acquire services.
“We are in no way, shape, or form making political statements here,” explains Ed Abrams, vice president of midmarket business at IBM. “We are just trying to help SMBs grow the way that we know that they can and the global economy needs them to.”
According to Abrams, most of
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Reader Feedback On As I See It: Piling On
September 12, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreVictor:
I don’t usually agree with the premises in your articles, but I have to give credit where it is due: you were “spot on” in your discussion of “the unemployed need not apply.”
I am a recruiter and see it time and again. It goes along with a discussion I heard in a gathering of Young i Professionals (YiPs) recently. There is clearly discrimination and disdain toward the unemployed and to those that may be “seasoned” even if they are making the effort to keep their skills current. Great job!
–Carole
Victor:
Thanks for that summary of what we
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A Big Data Hungry IBM Buys i2 and Algorithmics
September 12, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWith the exceptions of Lotus and Cognos, IBM doesn’t like to do large acquisitions of software companies. Big Blue likes to acquire niche specialists that have made it out of startup mode and have established a few hundred to a few thousand customers that could use the immensitude of IBM’s partner channel and direct sales force. While The Four Hundred was on hiatus, IBM snapped up two such software companies, each with its own industry-focused twist on big data.
On August 31, IBM paid a rumored $500 million to acquire i2, a British software company with a specialty in
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Second Quarter Server Sales Humming Right Along
September 12, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreWe were deep into the third quarter of 2011, but the data about how well or poorly different systems did in the second quarter had just come out while The Four Hundred was on its Labor Day hiatus. The good news is that the server business–a bellwether for the national and global economies–continues to grow and looks to be back to something close to normal.
With so much mixed economic news out there, the fact that server sales continue to be robust, coming close to setting all-time volume record for a second quarter, may be more of an indication about
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Aussies And Kiwis Get Killer Power 720 Bundle
September 12, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe exploding Chinese economy has been a boon for both Australia and New Zealand, which sit close together and are packed with food and raw materials that the Chinese economy needs. New Zealand has suffered an earthquake that has literally and economically rattled the country, but it is running trade surpluses according to The Economist. Like its larger neighbor, Australia, and the United States, New Zealand has its own deficit spending and housing bubble, too. But both Australia and New Zealand managed to escape the clutches of the Great Recession.
Given all this, I found the announcement of a