• Four Hundred Monitor, June 29

  June 29, 2022 Jenny Thomas

  It’s hard to find a lot of good news these days. That’s why we hope you find some respite in the enthusiasm with which we cover the IBM i and its community. Where else can you find a deep-dive series on subscription pricing on the IBM i stack, complete with stacks of data and analysis? The only place you can find that is in the Jungle, and you can catch up on it starting in the Top Story below. As we head into July, you will notice lots of new learning and networking opportunities coming up on the Calendar below, …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 26

  June 29, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  There have been some remediations for some issues with the MQSeries message queuing middleware for the IBM i platform, including IBM MQ Version 9.2.4 CD and IBM MQ Version 9.2.5 CD. You can find out more here. As for remediation or fixes, this issue was resolved under APAR IT40453. Upgrade to IBM MQ Version 9.3, there are no workarounds and mitigations.

  And then, of course, there is a new security vulnerability. Check out Security Bulletin: IBM MQ is vulnerable to multiple Eclipse Jetty issues, so please see more at this link, and see CVE-2021-28169, CVE-2021-34428, CVE-2021-28163, CVE-2021-28164, CVE-2021-34429, …

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• Guild Mortgage Takes The 20-Year Option For Modernization

  June 27, 2022 Alex Woodie

  When Kurt Reheiser returned to the IBM i server after a 15-year hiatus away the platform, things weren’t a lot different than how he left them. “My skills were more relevant than I thought they would be,” the former RPG developer said during last month’s POWERUp 2022 conference. Now as the CIO of a multi-billion-dollar company called Guild Mortgage, Reheiser is overseeing a modernization initiative that will keep building on the company’s successful history of custom development on the IBM i platform.

  Reheiser shared his and his company’s IT journey during a keynote address at COMMON’s annual user conference …

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• IBM i Licensing, Part 3: Can The Hardware Bundle Be Cheaper Than A Smartphone?

  June 27, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  How many monthly iPhone bills is a Power10-based entry server worth?

  Let me ask this another way: Which will be more expensive: Providing a seat for a corporate user of an IBM i system, with a complete set of hardware and systems software, or providing an iPhone 13 Pro Max with a data plan and cellular service to each end user? Both are premium products with premium features.

  We don’t know, but as the July 12 Power10 announcements are approaching, we are getting closer and closer to finding out.

  Let’s talk about the iPhone 13 Pro Max first because we …

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• Guru: The Finer Points of Exit Points

  June 27, 2022 Bruce Bading

  Many years ago, we received a call from an IBM i customer stating that all exit points were gone and the QAUDJRN and receivers were missing. Then the question, “Do you think we’ve been hacked?” Truth was, the exit points weren’t gone; the associated programs had been de-registered. Conclusion, they had most likely been compromised.

  The IBM i platform is a very securable system that can be secured (Secure vs Secured – What’s the difference?, WikiDiff), if you take steps to secure it.

  On the IBM i, a limited number of functions provide an exit so that your …

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• Big Blue Tweaks IBM i Pricing Ahead Of Subscription Model

  June 27, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in May, Big Blue said that it was going to be simplifying the IBM i stack ahead of a move to subscription pricing for systems software as well as hardware that runs it. To do that means zeroing out prices for a slew of things that had price tags on them formerly.

  In announcement letter 322-406 on June 1, IBM made good on that promise to move a bunch of software from “separately charged” to “entitled with IBM i status, which we outlined in our coverage on May 16. The news here is not just that IBM followed …

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• We Still Want IBM i On The Impending Power E1050

  June 27, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In March last year, as Big Blue was finishing up the development of the Power10 family of Power Systems machines, we wrote an essay explaining that we wanted IBM i to be a first-class operating system citizen on the four-socket Power E1050 machine, which we finally expect to see launch on July 12 if the rumors are correct.

  We never did like that IBM i was not supported on the Power8-based Power E850 four-socket server, and then also not supported on the Power9-based Power E950 four-socket server. And we equally do not like the fact that, if the rumors we …

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• DRV Brings More Automation to IBM i Message Monitoring

  June 22, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Automation is the name of the game in IT today, particularly with the talent shortage gripping the industry and remote work becoming the norm. To that end, a new release of a message management solution from DRV Technologies that will enable IBM i shops to automate their responses to IBM i messages will likely be well received.

  DRV Technologies develops a series of handy utilities for the IBM i server, including spool management and distribution (SpoolFlex), a forms management tool (FormFlex), secure MICR check printing (SecureChex), a database query and report writing tool (DBXFlex), and MessageFlex, a message monitoring solution. …

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• Managed Cloud Saves Money By Cutting System And People Overprovisioning

  June 22, 2022 Ron Venzin

  For most IBM i shops in the world, a unit of compute, storage, or networking on a cloud or a unit of time for a skilled IT specialist is always going to cost more than what it costs to have such talent in house. And so, you would think, putting an IBM i system in the cloud and managing all aspects of that system will always cost companies more money, right?

  Wrong.

  Here’s the part of the math that people rarely do, and that we do each time we close another cloud and managed services deal for an IBM i …

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• Multiple Security Vulnerabilities Patched on IBM i

  June 22, 2022 Alex Woodie

  In recent weeks, IBM has disclosed a handful of vulnerabilities in its IBM i operating system and related IBM i products, including Db2 Mirror, WebSphere, Navigator for i, the Java development and runtime tools, and OmniFind Text Search Server. IBM has shipped PTFs for the security problems, which range in severity from medium to high.

  IBM warned of security holes in the HTTP Server (the one powered by Apache) in a June 13 security bulletin. The flaws, identified as CVE-2022-22720 and CVE-2022-22721, carry the risk of a HTTP request smuggling that could poison the Web cache, bypass firewalls, and …

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