Timothy Prickett Morgan
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Admin Alert: Will i5/OS V5R4M
October 13, 2010 Joe Hertvik
… Read morex Support Run Out on April 7, 2015?
I recently performed a best guess analysis on when IBM i5/OS V5R4Mx support will actually run out. My client wanted to estimate how long they could theoretically get IBM support for running on V5R4Mx without having to upgrade. I came up with a possible final end of software support date for i5/OS V5R4Mx of April 7, 2015. Sound crazy? Check my logic and tell me where I’m wrong.
The Challenge
Sadly, this client was considering phasing out their i5/OS ERP environment in favor of an Intel-based platform. However foolish
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Counterintuitive Table Creation
October 13, 2010 Ted Holt
… Read moreTo be able to create one table that is described exactly like an existing table or view is good. But how you create that table determines whether the new table is exactly like the old one or not. Believe it or not, something as trifling as a pair of parentheses can make a difference.
Small Things Matter
The CREATE TABLE statement has several forms. Here are the two I want to talk about today.
CREATE TABLE xxx LIKE zzz CREATE TABLE xxx (LIKE zzz)
There’s not much difference–one pair of parentheses. But as amazing as it sounds, the inclusion or
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Don’t Let Your RPG Just Drift, Grab an OAR!
October 13, 2010 Jon Paris
… Read moreWhen IBM Rational Open Access (OAR): RPG Edition was announced, all the buzz was about how it would (or would not) impact the green-screen world. But the possibilities for OAR go far beyond workstations. Perhaps more to the point, while few people have the skills to write their own 5250 handlers, writing handlers for other purposes is well within the grasp of the average RPG programmer.
In this tip I am going to introduce you to the basic mechanics of how an OAR handler works. In a sub-sequent tip, I will put that theory into practice by describing the workings
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Fibre Channel Gets Revved Up To 16 Gb/sec Speeds
October 11, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIs the Fibre Channel protocol for linking servers to storage area networks going to go the way of all flesh, like Token Ring for networks did? Can anything survive the onslaught of the unstoppable Ethernet protocol, which steals every good idea from any new technology?
Fibre Channel over Ethernet may be available on many 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches today, but companies have made huge investments in Fibre Channel switches and adapters and they are not so keen on getting rid of those quite yet. Moreover, while everyone is talking about the latest Ethernet protocols being beefed up with the lossless
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Arrow ECS Skill Builder Tools Help Create Gung-Ho IBM Resellers
October 11, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIf you are not a reseller of IBM systems and you want to become one, then Arrow Electronics, one of the largest master distributors of servers in the world, has created a new tool called Skill Builder that will get you all trained up and ready to attack the market.
The Skill Builder tool, which is completely online, is used by resellers to track the training of individual people and the whole company as they train to gain skills and certifications to peddle different IBM hardware, software, and services. Skill Builder has step-by-step instructions to help you become a
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A Mixed Bag for IT Jobs in September
October 11, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe U.S. Department of Labor said in its latest jobs report, which came out last Friday, that the unemployment rate remained at 9.6 percent in September, even as the private sector added jobs because Uncle Sam is still shedding census workers that helped pad the numbers earlier this year. And thus making the unemployment rate not be as high as it might otherwise have been.
According to the September report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the non-farm full-time employment dropped by 95,000 people last month, with Federal, state, and local government shedding 159,000 jobs. About 77,000 census workers were
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Big Blue Widens IBM i User Fee Discount Deal
October 11, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe fourth quarter push at IBM is on, and it is a wonder that we haven’t seen more deals to help drive sales of Power Systems gear running the IBM i operating system. The only official deal action coming out of Big Blue last week was a rejiggering of a deal that came out in August, giving customers some discounts on user-based fees for IBM i on selected entry blade, rack, and tower servers.
Under that deal, which came out in announcement letter 310-241, IBM gave customers who bought new Power 520, 710, or 720 servers or JS12, JS22,
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Sundry Power Systems and BladeCenter Announcements
October 11, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreThe timing was probably coincidental, or the result of some vestigial impulse to make announcements during the fall COMMON midrange user group meeting, but IBM late last week announced a slew of new high-end hardware disk arrays (which don’t have much to do with most IBM i shops) and tweaked its Power Systems and BladeCenter lineup a bit.
IBM scattered these announcements all over the place last week, so let’s go through them one letter at a time. In announcement letter 110-199, IBM made some changes to both Power Systems and BladeCenter platforms.
On the Power 710 and 730
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IBM i Dominates the CPW Capacity Budget
October 11, 2010 Timothy Prickett Morgan
… Read moreIBM has a tiered approach to processing capacity for Power Systems hardware using Power7 chips, with smaller machines costing a lot less per unit of capacity than midrange boxes, and enterprise capacity costing even more. As I showed in last week’s issue, the difference in a unit of processing capacity is quite large across all the Power7 machines. When you add in the costs of IBM i 7.1 and Software Maintenance support for the complete system, the numbers get a lot bigger and it becomes obvious why customers don’t really want to buy anything other than a Power 720
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Admin Alert: Getting Started with i/OS Security Auditing, Part 2
October 6, 2010 Joe Hertvik
… Read moreLast month, I discussed how to configure security auditing in an i/OS V5R4Mx environment. This issue, I’ll look at the other side of the equation and discuss what you can do with your security auditing data once you have it. I’ll look at some of the reporting facilities available on the system and how to take advantage of them.
Before Getting Started
If you’re just getting started, you may want to review part 1 of this series to make sure your iSeries, System i, or Power i box is configured correctly for security auditing. The techniques I’m presenting here