• How Much Does NVM-Express Flash Really Boost IBM i Performance?

  November 9, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the NVM-Express protocol, a storage overlay for the PCI-Express peripheral bus that allows flash to be addressed in a parallel fashion as flash in its own right and not as emulated disk storage using a SATA or SCSI protocol, the idea is to get those vintage storage drivers out of the way and let the operating system kernel speak directly to the flash. This is done so the impressive – and seemingly always growing – I/O bandwidth of flash can actually be brought to bear to speed up applications.

  Flash in general, and NVM-Express flash in particular, has been …

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• Thoroughly Modern: A Wealth Of Funding Options Makes It Easier To Take On Modernization

  November 9, 2020 Jeff Lovette

  (Sponsored Content) Investment in IT is being driven by a new conversation – the value-aligned technology stack. The pandemic/recession is triggering the need for coordinated, business-led technology strategies that bring costs under control and harvest more value from technology to transform the business. Even before the events of 2020 began to play out, it wasn’t always easy to get funding for key IT initiatives, and now, as the world tries to come to grips with our new reality, it may seem even tougher. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

  From a business sense, three key notions …

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• Guru: Manage PTFs With The Administration Runtime Expert

  November 9, 2020 Dawn May

  This fourth article in my series on using the Administration Runtime Expert (ARE) reviews how ARE is used to manage PTFs. This article assumes you have already learned the basics of how to use ARE from the prior articles.

  PTF management with ARE features these key functions:

  • Check your installed group PTF levels compared to the latest levels available from IBM
  • Verify consistent PTF levels installed across multiple partitions
  • Distribute PTF images to endpoint systems
  • Optionally load and apply PTFs

  The ARE Template Editor provides the interface to define your templates for PTF management.

  

  Start by determining what type of …

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• As I See It: Reviewing Performance Reviews

  November 9, 2020 Victor Rozek

  I started working at the age of 15 for a ship chandler on the San Francisco docks. Like many entry-level blue-collar positions, there wasn’t any talk of job descriptions or performance expectations. Basically, some burly guy told me what to do, and I did it.

  Over the ensuing decades, however, I’ve had a goodly number of white-collar jobs replete with detailed job descriptions, project goals, and deadlines, all anchored by the assurance of regular performance evaluations. None of it materialized exactly as advertised. In a dynamic, rapidly changing environment, what you end up doing is often not precisely what you …

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• Additions To The Db2 Web Query Family

  November 9, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Change is in the air for Db2 Web Query, the primary business intelligence tool for IBM i environments from Big Blue. Earlier this year, IBM launched two new versions of the product, and this fall, IBM delivered version 2.3 of the product. Finally, there’s been a change of ownership of the third-party company behind the software.

  Let’s start with the change in ownership. Last month, TIBCO Software announced its intent to acquire Information Builders, the privately held New York City business intelligence software company that Gerald Cohen founded way back in 1975. IBI’s primary product is WebFOCUS, which forms …

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• IBM Pulls Plug on Systems Magazine, Pushes Community Site

  November 4, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM Systems magazine will cease publishing at the end of 2020, ending a two-decade-plus run as an IBM-backed magazine serving the IBM i, AIX, and System z communities, IBM announced this week. In its place, Big Blue plans to ramp up the IBM Community website, which, you will remember, absorbed the old developerWorks content earlier this year.

  IBM Systems Magazine has been produced by MSP TechMedia, a division of MSP Communications, under a license from IBM. The media partnership between the two companies, which has been ongoing for at least 22 years, included two magazines: the monthly IBM Systems …

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• Grafana Provides a Visualization Option for IBM i Metrics

  November 4, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Today’s IT professional needs to stay informed on what’s happening across a slew of systems, including storage and CPU utilization. Having a platform-neutral system to visualize all these metrics is important, and one of the most widely used open source observability platforms today is a project called Grafana.

  Grafana was originally developed back in 2014 by a developer at Orbitz to be a front-end for Graphite, which another Orbitz developer created years earlier for capturing and storing time-series data generated by a wide array of servers, storage systems, applications, and other pieces of IT gear.

  Eventually, the creators decided that …

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• IBM Delivered An RDi Update, Too

  November 4, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Next week, IBM is planning to deliver the PTFs that include the functionality contained in the Technology Refreshes it just unveiled for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4 last month. You will want to stay on the lookout for those updates. But some of the capabilities that IBM “announced” in the TRs shipped months ago, including those for Rational Developer for i (RDi).

  The latest release of RDi, or version 9.6.0.8, was included as a feature for IBM i 7.3 TR9 and IBM i 7.4 TR4. IBM, of course, announced those TRs on October 6 and says it plans to …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, November 4

  November 4, 2020 Jenny Thomas

  IT Jungle readers are familiar with the writing style of our fearless leader, and editor in chief, Timothy Prickett Morgan. Next week, on November 10, you can actually hear him in action as he moderates a live discussion panel for Eradani with IBM i users who share their success stories. Tim is an entertaining host so it’s worth your time to listen in. You can find the listing below in our Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings section. Also, COMMON members don’t miss out Top Story below for info on the appreciation celebration planned for next week.

  Top Stories

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 44

  November 4, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  You may or may not be aware of this news so it is worth sharing: there is a new version of Access Client Services that is due in the first week of December this year. And, a final reminder that the new Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4 are going to be available on November 13, and so will the Tech Refresh Resaves related to them.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • QMGTOOLS

  PTF Groups 7.3:

  • QMGTOOLS

  PTF Groups 7.2:

  • QMGTOOLS

  PTF Groups 7.1:

  • Nothing here.

  New …

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