• Let’s Unscramble IBM’s Server Sales in Q1 2008 a Little

  April 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The convergence of the System i and System p Power-based server lines that has been taking place in gradual steps was finalized a few weeks ago. But the bean counters at IBM did not fully converge the Power platforms in Big Blue’s financial reports because this merger was not yet finished when IBM ended its first quarter of 2008. But there was another reason IBM might have waited to just report on Power Systems as a single unit, too. Because if it didn’t, it might have had to show that the delays in rolling out Power6-based servers and AIX 6.1

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• Thanks to Convergence, i 6.1 Shops Get PAVE Linux-X86 Emulation

  April 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  So you have an iSeries or System i server or you are looking to buy or upgrade to a new Power 520, 550, 570, or 595 server, and you also want to consolidate some Linux workloads onto your machine to reduce complexity and make better use of the iron you invest lots of dough in. The only problem is that some of the Linux applications you have only run on X86 processors. Last year, if you were a System p customer using AIX or a shop buying what was formerly known as the OpenPower variant of the System p platform

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• IBM Keeps the Power 595 at 254 Partitions, For Now

  April 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Sometimes, server makers can be perplexing. Every server maker on the planet, and their chip partners if they use them for all or some of their product lines, are keen on showing that they have hardware-assisted virtualization electronics built into their chips. IBM started adding virtualization features into the hardware to better deploy logical partitions a decade ago and a decade earlier in mainframes, so this is old hat to Big Blue even though people make a big deal about it these days on the X64 platform or various RISC or Itanium platforms. In October 2006, I had a long

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• Kodak Buys Intermate for IPDS Expertise

  April 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When most people think of Kodak, the Rochester, New York, technology company, they probably think of film for cameras or, in more modern times, the company that is trying to stay in business by becoming a place where people upload digital photos to have them printed out or buy the paper to do their own photo printing at home. But Kodak is an expert in all kinds of digital technology, and it has aspirations in a market it calls transactional printing. And to that end, Kodak last week announced that it has acquired Intermate A/S, a relatively small

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• IT Shops Worried About Energy, But Cutting Power Isn’t Happening

  April 21, 2008 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With energy costs on the rise on all fronts and data centers running out of room and power to add more servers, the idea of getting green in the data center–conserving energy if possible or getting the most work out of the energy used in computing complexes–has certainly taken hold in the psyches of both the board room and the white noise room. But according to a recent survey, few companies are actually doing anything about it beyond thought. BlueArc, one of a number of upstart vendors of virtualized, power-efficient network storage arrays, recently commissioned a survey of data

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• More about SQL and Logical Files

  April 16, 2008 Ted Holt

  Last week I advised you to avoid referencing logical files in SQL queries. This week I have a little more information for you regarding SQL and its love-hate relationship with logical files. This week’s tip: In your QAQQINI file, set IGNORE_DERIVED_INDEX to *YES. So what does that mean? First, QAQQINI is a file that you can use to control query processing. If you’re not familiar with it, follow the links at the end of this article to learn about it. At this point, I assume you know what QAQQINI is and that you have duplicated it from QSYS to QUSRSYS

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• Performance Advice from a Mysterious Friend, Part 5

  April 16, 2008 Ted Holt

  Here’s yet another performance tip from a fellow subscriber and System i consultant. Thanks for the feedback on previous tips. Today’s tip: “Use soft commit when committing transactions containing a small number of update, insert, and/or delete operations.” According to the IBM V5R4 Information Center, “Soft commit is a form of commitment control that limits the number of times that the system writes journal entries associated with a transaction to disk.” In this regard, it is much like journal caching, but unlike journal caching, there is no additional fee for soft commit. Be warned that soft commit does

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• Admin Alert: V6R1 Changes for the i5/OS Administrator, Part 2

  April 16, 2008 Joe Hertvik

  Last week, I started making a list of some of the more memorable V6R1 operating system enhancements for the i5/OS administrator. This week, I continue the list and point out some other V6R1 functions that you should be on the lookout for. Before starting, please note that all the information contained here comes from available information about the new release as well as information I picked up at the COMMON user conference from IBMers and various System i experts. Since V6R1 is brand new and not installed in the wider base of i5/OS shops yet, there isn’t a lot

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• i-Based SCS500 Internet Phone System Now Available

  April 15, 2008 Alex Woodie

  IBM this week officially ships the Nortel Software Communications Systems 500, the new voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system for Power Systems and System i shops with 1,000 users or less. The SCS500 was designed to provide a simple and affordable Internet-based phone system for small and mid size businesses (SMBs) that have neither the resources nor the need for more highly customizable and expensive VoIP systems, including the hugely scalable 3Com offering that also runs on the IBM midrange server. IBM announced last June that it was working with Nortel on an easy-to-use VoIP offering that made sense

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• Raz-Lee Flushes Out Fraud with Application Security Tool

  April 15, 2008 Alex Woodie

  The System i security experts at Raz-Lee have developed a new product called AP-Journal that’s designed to detect fraudulent field-level changes to DB2/400-based application files that could indicate inside fraud. The new tool, which Raz-Lee first unveiled two weeks ago at the COMMON conference in Nashville, Tennessee, is based on IBM journaling and will be most useful for companies in the healthcare and financial services industries, the company says. One of the most pressing security issues affecting System i shops is that too many organizations grant way too much authority to their users. According to a recent security survey performed

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