• Tooling Around With IBM i Access Client Solutions Announcements

  February 21, 2018 Dan Burger

  Access Client Solutions (ACS) received several feature/function enhancements when the Technology Refreshes were announced last week with a little something for end users, system administrators, and database engineers. Although nothing stands out as a major item, this is an incremental release fulfilling user-requested features.

  The 5250 emulator is a good example. It’s a key technology that is likely the most used component in ACS, but it’s been around for so long it’s easy to think there’s nothing new in emulation. But users never seem to cease to ask for something new: support for Chinese CCSID 1371 is one of those …

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• BRMS Cloud Backups Get Recovery Teeth

  February 21, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that use Backup, Recovery and Media Services for i (BRMS) have been able to save their backups to the cloud for over a year. However, they faced restrictions when it came to restoring those backups to a system that wasn’t the originating server, which made the feature less useful in real-world disaster. Now IBM and its development partners are removing that restriction with the latest batch of IBM i tech refreshes.

  We touched on the new BRMS capability last week in our round-up story about IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh 4 (TR4) and IBM i 7.2 TR8. …

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• IBM Patches ‘ROBOT’ Flaw in IBM i Crypto Library

  February 21, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM has issued patches to fix a serious security problem in the IBM Global Security Kit, or GSKit, a relatively obscure crypto package that implements SSL/TLS encryption algorithms across a variety of IBM products, including IBM i. An old flaw in the underlying RSA crypto algorithm that could let hackers decrypt data in a “side channel” attack has resurfaced under a new moniker: “ROBOT.”

  GSKit is an IBM toolkit that implements various encryption-related functions, including symmetric and asymmetric ciphers, random number generation, hashing algorithms, and encryption key management capabilities, for products that need over-the-wire encryption, including IBM i, Linux, and …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, February 21

  February 21, 2018 Dan Burger

  Artificial intelligence (AI) may be the goose that laid the golden egg, with promises of systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience. But there are seldom talked about dangers that could cook your goose. Pay attention to regulatory compliance, law, privacy, and ethics as you integrate AI into your systems.

  Class action lawsuits are barking at the heels of Intel stemming from the handling of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. These stories, plus tips on communications skills that aid project planning, make it into …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 20, Number 7

  February 21, 2018 Doug Bidwell

  This is our latest Spectre and Meltdown (SM) speculative execution security vulnerabilities update. We finally got the straight answer on firmware to models from IBM. We have updated the SM worksheet in the IBM i PTF Guide to reflect what we have learned. Just a reminder, the Spectre and Meltdown speculative execution security vulnerabilities have been classified by IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) as having a “High Severity” level.

  There are no changes to the PTF Groups this week. I suspect the Power9 announcement and Tech Refreshes have kept everyone busy.

  Here is a rundown on the IBM …

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• Drilling Down Into The New Power9 Entry Servers

  February 19, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In last Wednesday’s issue of The Four Hundred, we gave you a high-level overview of the six new Power9 entry servers, code-named “ZZ” by IBM, as well as an initial pass on the changes that came with the latest Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3. If you haven’t read these, please do, because they give you information on IBM’s strategy with regard to the Power9 iron and the IBM i platform.

  In this issue, we are going to drill down into the six new Power9 systems, taking particular care with the single-socket Power S914 and dual-socket Power …

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• Maxava Gives Deleted Data A Second Chance

  February 19, 2018 Alex Woodie

  To err is human, as they say. But accidentally deleting the payroll master file – well, that’s a serious problem. Instead of seeking forgiveness, one might check out a new solution from Maxava called Capture Point Restore (CPR), which essentially provides a safety net that shields IBM i shops from suffering the dire consequences of fat-finger mistakes and malicious acts alike.

  Users accustomed to Windows know that if they accidentally delete a file, they can easily recover it from the Recycle Bin. There are similar utilities protecting data from permanent deletion in Linux. But there’s no such facility protecting files …

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• Guru: Moving A Web Service To Another Web Server

  February 19, 2018 Mike Larsen

  IBM Integrated Web Services (IWS) makes it easy to create web services and deploy them to a web server. If you need to deploy the same service to multiple web servers, you could use IWS to manually create it on each server, but it would be time-consuming and error-prone. Simply missing a setting when creating the service can lead to unexpected results.

  Or you could automate the process. That would ensure the attributes of the service carry forward from server to server. While I won’t get into the web service creation process, as there are already many articles that address …

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• Mad Dog 21/21: The Old Man Of The Sea

  February 19, 2018 Hesh Wiener

  Proteus, said Homer in The Odyssey, was the formidable old man of the sea, capable of shapeshifting and empowered by the gift of prophecy. IBM, observed a commentator in Tully, a dozen miles north of Homer, is the venerated patriarch of information technology, infinitely adaptable and proficient at discerning what lies ahead. Both employ their ability to change their form both as a defense and as a way to achieve goals unattainable in their original shape. However, this transformative power makes it difficult for others to rely on them, for shapeshifting and constancy are in conflict. …

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• IBM i Code Base Is Elderly, The System Is Not

  February 19, 2018 Dan Burger

  Pain management. It’s good for your overall health and good for your business. Think of your IT strategy as ongoing pain control. If you are suffering with chronic pain, amputation (migration to another system) is probably not your best choice.

  “People don’t realize how painful some of the legacy systems are,” Mike Pavlak says. “They are complex and tightly wound, which is both a blessing and a curse. They often perform like lightning – transactions fly through the system – but developers spend a lot of time on maintenance. There’s a certain amount of truth to the statement that too …

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