• Some More Power Systems Features Going Bye-Bye

  April 25, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM is cleaning its Power Systems house again, which stands to reason after the April 12 announcements. It is spring, after all. As detailed in announcement letter 911-015, a bunch of Power Systems features will be ripped out of the Big Blue catalog later this year and early next, and IBM wants to give you fair warning so you can stock up now on parts you might need later. The 288-port QLogic InfiniBand switch (product 7874-240) will probably not be missed by most OS/400 and i shops when it is withdrawn from marketing on July 29, but the various

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• More Servers Added to the IBM i License Transfer Deal

  April 25, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM is letting some more of its i5/OS and IBM i software licenses slide from old machines to newer ones to cushion the blow of upgrading to more modern Power-based machinery. If you drill down into announcement letter 211-108, which discussed a lot of the tweaks and changes Big Blue did for IBM i 6.1.1 and 7.1 in conjunction with the launch of fatter PS7XX blade servers and faster engines for the Power 750 midrange server, you will see that the Power 520 (both the 9405-520 and the 9406-520 machines) as well as the new PS703 and PS704 blade

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• Annual COMMON Conference Comes to You

  April 25, 2011 Dan Burger

  Live from Minneapolis . . . it’s COMMON LiveTrack. Although you may be blue about missing out on the educational sessions, the vendor expo, and the networking with your IBM Power Systems brethren at the COMMON 2011 Annual Meeting and Exposition, you have an opportunity to see what and who you are missing during the May 1 through 4 event. Portions of the largest event exclusively for IBM i and Power Systems users will be free and a separate smorgasbord of educational sessions can be viewed for a fee ($299 for COMMON members and $399 for non-members). The free

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• iManifest EMEA Getting Back On Its Feet

  April 25, 2011 Dan Burger

  Based on the results of a Webcast earlier this month, iManifest EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) is reported to have had a successful re-launch. The group is planning a second Webcast May 17. According to a press release from Andrew Nicholson, sales and marketing manager at Utilities 400, an IBM i vendor based in the United Kingdom, the keynote speech by Frank Soltis “rallied the troops with his thoughts on why the movement is necessary in EMEA and his aspiration for the platform in the future.” Soltis, the chief scientist of the platform when it was known as

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• Antitrusters Nod Attachmate’s Novell Buy, SLES 10 Gets Final Service Pack

  April 25, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  NetWare and Linux distributor Novell has managed to get the approval of antitrust regulators in the United States and Germany to sell off 882 patents to a holding company that many in the IT industry regard with suspicion because it is backed by Microsoft, EMC, Oracle, and Apple. And that means the $2.2 billion acquisition of Novell by Attachmate can proceed. Attachmate announced that it wanted to buy Novell last November, and under the acquisition deal it negotiated, the company said it would be selling off 882 unspecified patents to a company called CPTN Holdings, which

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• Installing a PHP/MySQL Open Source Application on i

  April 20, 2011 Paul Tuohy

  I have often used PHP/MySQL open source applications on my PC, but I have never had the opportunity, or need, to use one on the IBM i. That is, not until recently. I was working on a project with three other developers, and we are located in Ireland, Canada, and the U.S. We needed some simple project management software that would work over the Web and did not require in degree in “Gant chart” mechanics. After a quick search I came across a PHP/MySQL open source package, ProjectPier, which seemed to suit our needs. So, in this article, I

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• Stuff I Neglected to Mention on February 16, 2011

  April 20, 2011 Ted Holt

  No matter how hard I try, it seems that I often neglect to mention something important in an article. On February 16, Four Hundred Guru included two of my articles–one about commands, the other about output queues and print devices. In each one, I omitted a salient piece of information. Fortunately, readers of this august publication were quick to bring my shortcomings to my attention. Here are some representative comments. Hey, Ted: Another fan of commands here. I think you missed one of the best advantages of using commands instead of CALL–namely, that of managing change–in your article Commands: Underused

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• Best Options for Post-i 6.1.1 Upgrade Backups

  April 20, 2011 Hey, Joe

  We’re performing an i/OS 6.1.1 upgrade this weekend. My boss wants to perform a full system backup after we get done. However, full system backups take six-hours to run in my shop. I have a very tight upgrade window, and the machine can only be down for 18 hours. What’s my best option for backing up a newly upgraded operating system? –Wil There are two overriding goals in tight operating system upgrade scenarios: 1) Protect your work so that you don’t have to perform an i 6.1.1 upgrade a second time if the machine crashes; and 2) Get the machine

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• AURA Keeps Classic IBM i PHP Toolkit Alive

  April 19, 2011 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that have relied on, and grown to appreciate, the old PHP Toolkit that IBM is replacing with a new open source solution will be pleased to hear that AURA Equipments is keeping the product alive. In fact, the French software company is rolling out a new release of the “classic” PHP toolkit–now called EasyCom for PHP–that addresses some of the shortcomings that led IBM to banish it in the first place. Five years ago, AURA and Zend Technology formed a partnership whereby AURA’s client-server integration technology, called EasyCom, was OEM’ed and packaged into the PHP offerings that

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• PowerTech: IBM i Security Still Needs Work

  April 19, 2011 Alex Woodie

  The results from PowerTech‘s latest State of IBM i Security report are in, and the results are mixed. While the software company’s survey shows signs of improvement in some areas, such as the average number of users with unfettered system access, there are still areas of grave concern to security professionals, who have almost come to expect a lackadaisical approach to security from IBM i customers. Each year, PowerTech publishes a State of IBM i Security report that summarizes the results of hundreds of system audits the company performs on the IBM i servers of customers and prospects. For

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