• IBM Delivers a Db2 Mirror Update

  January 12, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM updated its Db2 Mirror continuous availability solution last month with support for ObjectConnect, which shrinks the amount of disk space required to copy objects from one IBM i server to another. It also updated the high-speed networking protocols at the heart of the Db2 Mirror solution, which should improve the security of data flowing over networks and makes Db2 Mirror clusters more feasible over longer distances.

  IBM has provided ObjectConnect commands on the IBM i server for years as a way to replicate IBM i objects. The software is useful because it improves the efficiency of copy operations by …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, January 12

  January 12, 2022 Jenny Thomas

  Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe anyone is entering the new year without a tiny bit of hope that we may see Covid and all its variants fade into the background of the news cycle. Here in the Jungle, we continue to be grateful to serve the IBM i community and are looking forward to what we hope will be an interesting year for the Power Systems platform, with entry and midrange Power10 machines coming to market. But before we march ahead, just wanted to call some attention to everyone’s favorite Guru Ted Holt, who retired at the end …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 2

  January 12, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  The Log4j and Log4Shell saga continues here in the second edition of the IBM i PTF Guide in 2022, which is a fast follower to the one we published just two days ago. IBM has issued a new Security Bulletin, explaining that IBM i components are affected by CVE-2021-4104 (Log4j version 1.X), and the full details about the security exposure and mitigation techniques can be found at this link.

  Here are the affected products and their versions:

  • IBM Navigator for i (heritage version only): IBM i 7.4, 7.3, and 7.2 – the heritage version
  • Integrated Web Services Server (IWS):

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• The Pivotal Year Ahead For Big Blue And IBM i Shops

  January 10, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When we look back on it many years from now, this year, 2022, will be a pivotal year in the history of the Power Systems platform from Big Blue, which was commercially significant starting in February 1990 when the RS/6000 was launched but which obviously traces its roots through the IBM i and OS/400 branches of the Power Systems family tree all the way back to the System/3 launched in July 1969 just 10 days after humans first landed on the moon.

  There are different kinds of pivot points in the history of the IBM midrange platforms, including the launch …

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• IBM i Community Predictions For 2022, Part 1

  January 10, 2022 Alex Woodie

  While the month and year ostensibly are just values in the date field, when the calendar flips over from December to January, things feel different. There’s a greater sense of hope and optimism for what the new year will bring. Coming off another calamitous year filled with COVID-19, perhaps it’s we need that even more so this year.

  It has become an IT Jungle tradition to ask members of the IBM i community at the start of the year for their predictions. This year is no different, and so we’ll kick off the first part of our (most likely) two-part …

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• The Great Resignation Intersects Application Modernization And Digital Transformation

  January 10, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Depending on how you want to look at it, today is March 680, 2020, or January 10, 2022. It is too early to tell if it is actually a new year or just the penultimate one stretched out unnaturally by biological circumstance. We remain hopeful that 2022 will represent something of a return to normal, but we also know that we can never return to the way things were in 2019. Too many people have had too much time to think about their careers, and a very large number of people are considering job changes or have already jumped ship …

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• IBM And Samsung Go Vertical To Push Transistor Density On Chips

  January 10, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue might have sold off its IBM Microelectronics chip fabrication operation to GlobalFoundries many years ago, but that does not mean that the company does not still do a reasonably large amount of fundamental research into chip maker techniques and tricks. Transistor, chip, and packaging research and development is a big portion of the patent portfolio at IBM and continues to be so because Big Blue still has some of the smartest chipheads on the planet working for it because IBM wants to ensure there is a roadmap for future Power and System z processors and because it can …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 1

  January 10, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  While we were away on holiday, the Log4J and Log4Shell vulnerabilities hit the enterprise systems of the world, including the IBM i platform. So right off the bat here with the first edition of The IBM i PTF Guide in 2022, we want to point you to Big Blue’s Log4j/Log4Shell on IBM i update, which will help you figure out if you are vulnerable. See more at this link.

  Here are the Security Bulletins for this:

  Security Bulletin: Vulnerability in Apache Log4j (CVE-2021-44228) affects Power HMC V9

  Security Bulletin: Vulnerability in Apache Log4j (CVE-2021-44228) affects Power HMC V8

  Security …

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• Critical Log4j Vulnerability Hits Everything, Including the IBM i Server

  December 15, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Hackers gave themselves an early Christmas present this year with a critical security flaw in Log4j, a popular logging framework that is used across many programs, including some that run on IBM i. IBM i shops are encouraged to take this flaw very seriously, as the vulnerability already is being actively exploited in the wild. However, finding where Log4j exists in your stack is not always simple, which makes this particular flaw particularly nasty.

  The Log4j zero-day vulnerability, which was disclosed last week by security researchers with CERT New Zealand, was logged into the National Vulnerability Database as CVE-2021-44228 …

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• How Technical Debt Can Affect Your Business In 2022

  December 15, 2021 Dave Willis

  IBM’s Power Systems is its own ecosystem. Businesses that have been on a platform like IBM i for an extended period of time, from years to decades, can run into challenges that stem from accumulated technical debt.

  At a high level, technical debt typically refers to what happens in software development when choosing an easy solution, rather than taking the time when coding and designing business applications. Over-customizations and old code that your business has relied on for so long, may be less expensive, solve an immediate problem, and help in the short term, but end up hurting your business …

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