• How The Latest TRs Bolster HA/DR And Security

  October 28, 2019 Alex Woodie

  High availability, disaster recovery, and security are more important than ever, as enterprises look for ways to eliminate risks to their operations, applications, and data. To that end, it’s not surprising that IBM bolstered the HA/DR and security capabilities in IBM i with the latest Technology Refreshes that are slated to begin shipping November 15.

  Let’s start with the new HA features in Db2 Mirror for IBM i, the new business continuity offering that implements an active-active database cluster atop two unique IBM i logical partitions. Db2 Mirror, you’ll remember, was delivered with IBM i version 7.4, so it’s …

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• Wanted: A Real ROI Study For Midrange Platforms

  October 28, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is no shortage of IBM i shops that are sitting on back releases of the operating system and related systems software, or older Power Systems iron, or both. Sometimes, it takes a little convincing to get upper management to listen about how IT operations could be improved and extended if the company would only make some investments in upgrading the hardware and systems software. Sometimes it takes a lot of convincing, particularly when many small and medium businesses are run by their owners and in a certain sense any money that would be allocated for an upgrade is their …

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• Guru: Remove Extra Blanks, Or Why I Attend Conferences

  October 28, 2019 Ted Holt

  Have you been to a conference lately? If not, you may be shortchanging yourself. I attend several conferences every year and I get immense benefit from them. I learn a lot, I get a break from the day-to-day, and best of all, I build relationships with other people.

  I recently attended the RPG & DB2 Summit in Minneapolis, where I met a bright young developer named Kevan Robinson. He was kind enough to share his version of a tip that I shared with him and other attendees. It’s a technique that I learned ages ago from Craig Mullins, a mainframe …

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• As I See It: Quitting Time

  October 28, 2019 Victor Rozek

  Unlike relationships based on mutual regard, if you have issues with your job, your job doesn’t care. It’s just there, waiting to get done, by you or someone else. Nothing personal, just business.

  It’s more of a one-way relationship, with all of the emotional highs and lows experienced by the employee. And while managers have three options for dealing with undesirable workers: fix, move, or fire; employees have but one option for dealing with undesirable jobs: quit.

  But even when the workplace becomes intolerable, people often contrive to get themselves fired because they don’t have the courage to stand up …

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• Big Power8 Iron Gets A Reprieve, And More Power To You

  October 28, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The big Power9 iron has been in the field for more than a year now, and IBM had every intention of removing the Power8-based Power E870C and Power E880 E880C from its product catalog by Halloween, and said as much on February 26 this year in an announcement that we covered about a slew of withdrawals for the Power Systems platform.

  In announcement 119-078, dated October 22, IBM has decided to keep the For Sale signs up on the eight-socket Power E870C and 16-socket Power E880C machines for an extra two months, and now you will be able …

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• Digging Into the Latest IBM i TRs

  October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  The fall batch of Technology Refreshes (TRs) have been revealed, and as expected, there’s a bit of new functionality available for customers who use IBM i 7.3 and 7.4. In this story, we’ll tackle enhancements in open source, systems management and monitoring, and development, which means we’ll dive deeper into other areas, like database and HA/DR, in a future story.

  Let’s start with the fun stuff: open source. With IBM i 7.3 TR7 and 7.4 TR1, IBM has brought support for two prominent open source projects, including ZeroMQ and Redis.

  ZeroMQ is a universal messaging library that allows users to …

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• Java License Fallout Continues Impacting IBM i Shops

  October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Oracle’s decision to restrict the previously free distribution of Java version 8 tools and runtimes is impacting the entire IT industry. In our little neck of the woods, the decision to charge businesses for using Oracle’s Java has forced IBM i shops to take a hard look at the technology platform, and in some cases look for alternative solutions.

  Oracle ruffled feathers in the Java community in 2017, when it made substantial changes to its Java roadmap. The company announced that Java Standard Edition (SE) version 8, which is a legacy version of Java but is still in widespread use, …

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• Data Protection in the New Regulated Era

  October 23, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Companies must protect their data from all sorts of threats these days, including power outages, failed servers, and drive crashes. But one of the most important aspects of data protection today is ensuring the security and privacy of data, which is mandated by a slew of emerging data regulations.

  In May 2018, the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a far-reaching new law that gave people sweeping new rights over their data. While GDPR ostensibly just impacts EU citizens, many large companies in the U.S. and other countries adopted new security and privacy processes to ensure consistence …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, October 23

  October 23, 2019 Jenny Thomas

  The news of the week seems to be heavily focused on two different topics: quantum computing and ransomware. IBM is looking to establish itself as a quantum computing superpower, and is ready to go to the mat with Google over its claims that Google researchers are leading the pack. And then there are the omnipresent reports of ransomware attacks, which we continue to point out in hopes it reminds our readers to make data protection a high priority. You can find links to some of the highlights (or lowlights in the case of cyberattacks) for both topics below.

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Number 42

  October 23, 2019 Doug Bidwell

  Some weeks are slow, and some weeks we have lots to share. This is one of those busy weeks in PTF Land. First up, we have the following message to share: APAR MA47979 – INCORROUT – HLIC – 94XXDASD – HIPER. This Hard Disk drive code has a bug! You can read this link for details. It’s not on cume yet, but see the following fixing PTFs:

  • R710 MF66663
  • R720 MF66664
  • R730 MF66665
  • R740 MF66666

  We also learned at TechU there are new announcements with a planned Availability Date of November 16, so stay tuned.

  A Security Bulletin has popped …

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