• R2D2 Is Alive And Well–Inside Your IBM i Server

  November 9, 2015 Bob Losey

  R2D2? That little dome-headed droid that always kept the Star Wars heroes one step ahead of big trouble? Well, not exactly. The one we’re talking about doesn’t roll around, nor does he chirp. But, unlike the movie version, ours is real. He lives inside your IBM i server and he spends his life keeping you out of trouble. . . with never so much as a thank you from his owner. It’s time he got a little respect, because he works day and night; not only “off the books” but entirely off your payroll. Nevertheless, he’s the best system administrator

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• IBM i Executives: Where Are They Now?

  November 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Anybody remember Buell Duncan, who presided over his iSeries flock with a smooth Texas drawl? Or Colin Parris, who brought a doctorate degree in electrical engineering to his IBM i tenure? If you’ve been watching IBM for very long, you’ll know the company shifts around its top executives on a regular basis. But where are those former IBM i execs now, and what are they doing? The news might surprise you. Like lots of big, diverse companies, Big Blue likes to groom its leaders by giving them a wide range of assignments, which means that, over the past 20 years,

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• Crossroads Drops Rack Requirement, Adds De-Dupe in VTL

  November 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Mega-huge data centers are hot topics in the news, but mom and pop businesses often run their IBM i servers in cozy little data closets. This fact drove Crossroads Systems to launch a workstation version of its SPHiNX virtual tape library (VTL) that doesn’t require a rack. The Texas company also gave a preview of upcoming VTL features, including data de-duplication across the wire. Crossroads debuted the SPHiNX WS at the Fall COMMON Conference and Expo last month. With 3 TB of usable storage (expandable to 6 TB) and a starting price point of $6,800, the new VTL with the

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• Tango/04 Boosts IT-Business Alignment Capabilities

  November 4, 2015 Dan Burger

  Much of the alignment of IT and business processes can be better served with automated monitoring and management. In the IBM midrange community, systems management is a highly desirable and sometimes implemented capability. But automation has moved beyond the parameters that were set when the AS/400 and iSeries environments were the workhorses in the stable. There are new frontiers being explored by companies such as Tango/04 and its Alignia lineup of infrastructure, middleware, and application monitoring software. Tango takes the approach of managing infrastructure according to business needs. The company calls it business service management. It can be explained by

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• Komodo Launches Hosted Splunk Service for IBM i

  November 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that would like to start using Splunk to analyze their log data, but don’t want the hassle of setting Splunk up themselves, have a new option available to them. Last month Komodo Cloud announced that it’s now offering a cloud-based analytics service designed specifically using Splunk with IBM i-generated data. Over the past decade, Splunk has developed a solid reputation for its capability to analyze big data generated by machines. Its NoSQL-based software does the hard work of capturing, indexing, and correlating vast amounts of semi-structured data generated by servers, applications, network devices, mobile devices, and practically

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• Raz-Lee Adds Self-Auditing Feature to Security Products

  November 4, 2015 Alex Woodie

  “Who polices the police?” That’s the question many CIOs are asking as they clamp down on potential security exposures in response to increasingly strict regulations. Now Raz-Lee Security is working to reduce the suspicion surrounding IBM i system administrators (i.e., the server cops) by building self-auditing capabilities directly into its security tools. In many IBM i shops, the system administrator is typically the most powerful user on the system. This jack-of-all-trades is often called upon to do the work that would be covered by a security officer in bigger shops running open systems. It’s common to give the “keys to

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• How To Join The Power Linux Evolution

  November 2, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is hard to remember that IBM was not exactly sitting on the sidelines when Linux swept over the datacenter in the early 2000s in the wake of the dot-com bust. Big Blue saw the rise of Linux early on, among its supercomputer customers, and it was unsure how to preserve its revenue streams from AIX and OS/400 systems while at the same time embracing Linux. Here we are 15 years later, and it looks like IBM finally has its Linux act together on Power. The question we all have is this: Will it make a difference? Hope springs eternal,

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• Reflections Upon The RPG & DB2 Summit

  November 2, 2015 Ted Holt

  Reflections Upon The RPG & DB2 Summit I just returned home from Chicago and another enjoyable learning experience at the RPG & DB2 Summit. This was the fourth consecutive Summit for me as a member of the session speakers group. I consider it an honor and a privilege to be teaching alongside people like Jon Paris, Susan Gantner, Paul Tuohy, Scott Klement, Barbara Morris, and many others. Each Summit has been very beneficial to me, and I suspect it is the same for others who attend. Meeting and talking with the conference attendees is a treat for me. These are

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• Why The Time Has Come For Penetration Testing On IBM i

  November 2, 2015 Alex Woodie

  Home Depot’s point of sale (POS) system was breached in 2014, comprising information on 53 million accounts. A year before, Target’s POS was breached, putting data from at least 40 million customers in jeopardy. In both cases, the retailers were deemed “compliant” with Payment Cardholder Initiative (PCI) data security standards. But obviously there’s a big difference between complying with security regulations and actually having good security, and that’s true whether your shop runs on IBM i or any other platform. As cyber criminals get better at penetrating computer systems (and it’s worth reminding you that they are getting very, very

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• High Availability Calms Distributor’s Fears

  November 2, 2015 Dan Burger

  Behind this distribution company that spans Europe and the United States is an IBM Power8 system running IBM i. The production box is a single-socket, six-core, 3.02 GHz processor configuration capable of 59,500 CPW, but able to get the job done while operating on two cores. It sits in the home offices of LF SpA headquartered in Cesena, Italy, about a four-hour drive north of Rome. The company takes its business continuity very seriously, which is why it recently implemented high availability software from Maxava. Maxava has been in the high availability and disaster recovery business for 15-plus years.

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