• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 28: A Crazy Number of Security Vulnerability Patches

  August 24, 2026 Doug Bidwell

  It looks like 28 is not your lucky number if you are an IBM i shop. The reason why is that in Volume 28 and Number 28 of the IBM i PTF Guide, Big Blue has released a truly amazing number of security vulnerabilities and patches for the IBM i platform. We counted 40 security vulnerabilities, some of which are still awaiting patches, plus 22 High Impact/Pervasive (HIPER) patches for firmware on Power9, Power10, and Power11 systems. But a few items before we dive into that.

  First: The System Planning Tool, version 6.26.223.0, is now available for download at …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 29

  August 24, 2026 Doug Bidwell

  IBM laid a lot of PTF work on you last week, and this week is also a heavy one. So brace yourself. There are six security vulnerabilities in the IBM i stack and several other issues that you should be aware of. Let’s start with the random issues and then do the security issues.

  First, known issues (APARs) have been fixed for IBM i Access Client Solutions, ACS 1.1.9.15 (ACS11915), and here is the Klingon that describes it: DT498800 OSP-UNPRED MSGSSL007 – AN ERROR OCCURRED WITH AN SSL CERTIFICATE (JAVA.NIO.FILE.ATTRIBUTE.USERPRINCIPALNOTFOUNDEXCEPTION). I am not sure why they have to shout, but …

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• Inside The Encryption Key Management Changes In IBM i 7.6

  August 10, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM is making significant changes to how it handles encryption keys with IBM i 7.6. The big news is that IBM i shops now have bring-your-own-key (BYOK) support via IBM Key Protect for IBM Cloud offering, which scratches a certain regulatory itch. But IBM has also bolstered how it handles master keys and save/restore keys stored on the IBM i server, which boosts security, but also makes IPLs following DR events more complicated.

  Let’s start with the new bring-your-own-key (BYOK) support for IBM i in IBM Key Protect for IBM Cloud offering. IBM Key Protect is a cloud-based key management …

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• FalconStor Moved To The Blue Lagoon, And Is Poised For Growth Because Of It

  August 10, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Way back in the Dot Com boom, when FalconStor was founded, it was one of the early innovators of what we have come to know as software-defined storage and software-defined networking as well as disaggregated storage. These terms were not even coined until a decade after FalconStor was doing it in its first product, called IPStor, which is the foundation of the various products that the company still sells today.

  Like many companies, including IBM itself, FalconStor had some self-imposed business issues and financial challenges over the years – IBM in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, FalconStor in …

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• Guru: Claude’s SQL Tip

  August 10, 2026 Ted Holt

  Today’s tip comes to us from Claude, as in the AI chatbot created by Anthropic. I don’t need to introduce him. Many readers of this august publication are far better acquainted with him than I am. I have heard reports of IBM i programmers who have quit writing source code, telling Claude to write it for them. Some folks seem to be right proud of that fact. Furthermore, I’m told that some places no longer allow humans to write source code.

  I had a few ideas in mind for this article and was weighing the merits of each one when …

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• Astera Makes Extracting Legacy Report Data an AI Specialty

  August 10, 2026 Alex Woodie

  For all that large language models (LLMs) are really good at – and they are great at a few things – understanding large reports generated by IBM i servers and System Z mainframes is not one of them. A Southern California company called Astera has identified this gap and developed its own AI-based tool for extracting information from this valuable resource.

  Foundation AI models and LLMs are probabilistic systems, and they work best in the gray zones: Inputting words and images, and outputting other words and images that are similar to the originals that it was trained on but not …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 27

  August 10, 2026 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome to this week. You have some issues with IBM i Access Client Services to deal with as well as a new security bulletin.

  Let’s start with the ACS updates, which are rolled up into ACS 1.1.9.14 and which you can read more about at this link. All prior versions are vulnerable to:

  • Arbitrary code execution on Windows when installed for all users due to publicly writeable directory and configuration file.
  • Injection of rogue certificate authority due to publicly writeable truststore.
  • Zip slip path traversal exploit when importing a configuration.
  • Versions 1.1.8.3 through 1.1.9.13 are vulnerable to downloading unverified

  …

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• Welcoming The New IBM i Chief Architect And Other New Top Brass

  August 3, 2026 Alex Woodie

  As you have likely already heard, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will retired last week after a 41-year IBM career, and was succeeded in that role by Kris Whitney, who previously was the IBM i platform’s chief engineer. But this is just one change among several in IBM i leadership in recent months.

  For the past four years, Will officially had three roles at IBM, including chief architect for IBM i, IBM i chief technology officer, and IBM Distinguished Engineer. The last two titles, which Will gained in 2022, were significant at the time as they denoted Will’s position …

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• A Deep Dive Into That Power S1112 Entry Power11 Server

  August 3, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The entry “Bonnell+” Power S1112 server based on the Power11 processor has been shipping for a little more than a week. While we still have not been able to get our hands on updated Power10 entry server pricing as well as the pricing on the new Power S1112, we can tell you a bunch more about the new machine even though IBM has not yet added the Power S1112 to the entry Power11 Redbook.

  The feeds and speeds of the Power S1112 were detailed on July 22 in an IBM i Guided Tour, called Next-Generation Entry Infrastructure for IBM i: …

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• Guru: Beyond Three-Part Naming – Running SQL Across Remote IBM i Systems

  August 3, 2026 Gregory Simmons

  In my article Guru: Finding Data in The Forest – Exploring Three-Part Naming In SQL, I helped you to get started with three-part naming. If you have a network of IBM i systems and haven’t availed yourself of this capability, you may be surprised at just how powerful it can be. Instead of relying on data transfers, replication, or intermediate files, SQL can reach directly into remote systems as though the data were local.

  That works well when you know exactly which remote system contains the data you need. But what happens when your network grows from a handful …

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