• Ops Dashboard Gives Centralized View Into IBM i Performance

  November 9, 2015 Alex Woodie

  If your company is like most IBM i shops, the system is a critical part of your daily business. Whether you are packing consumer goods, reconciling bank statements, or delivering medical care, chances are the IBM i server plays a central role. But all too often, getting a single view into the state of the machine is difficult to achieve. That is what drove HelpSystems to release a consolidated operations dashboard with performance drill-down capabilities. The new operations dashboard that HelpSystems has unveiled allows users to monitor the state of their IBM i servers from the comfort of a mobile

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• As I See It: The Gospel According To Dan Price

  November 9, 2015 Victor Rozek

  There is a Biblical parable in the gospel according to Matthew that touches upon labor relations. As the story goes, a vineyard owner sends his foreman out to hire laborers at daybreak. They agree upon a wage–one denarius in this instance–and off they go to toil in the soil. (“Toiling” is the biblically preferred term for work.) But the foreman goes out several more times throughout the day and hires additional men, telling them simply that they will be paid “whatever is right.” Apparently, they needed work more than clarity about wages, so off they went to join the daybreak

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• 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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• Tuning SQL Environments On i

  November 3, 2015 Paul Tuohy

  One of the frustrating things about being a speaker at conferences is that when you want to attend another session with a topic that peaks your interest, it invariably clashes with when you are speaking. But every now and again, the scheduling gods work in your favor. Such was the case recently, when I was speaking at the excellent International i-Power 2015 conference. Scott Forstie, IBM‘s DB2 for i business architect, was giving a presentation, “IBM i Services – SQL interfaces into the IBM i operating system.” I had recently done an iTalk with Scott where we had chatted

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• Why And How To Update The HMC

  November 3, 2015 Larry Bolhuis

  I deliver a session on the HMC to many user groups, including COMMON. Attendance had been falling, so COMMON’s education team had decided to give the session just one more go. This time though I walked into a packed house, with people carrying in chairs and standing along the walls! “What brings you all here at 8 a.m.?” I asked. “You’re going to talk about updating the HMC, right?” was the response. You see IBM had just announced POWER6 severs, and that mandated newer code on the HMC. Some of you may wonder what an HMC is, so let’s

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