• And Then There Were Two: Big Blue Withdraws IBM i 7.4

  September 22, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  UPDATED: If you have a compelling reason to stay on IBM i 7.4 and need a license to it for a machine, or if IBM i 7.4 is the last release you can get your applications to without a major change in that code, then you have better shake a leg. Because IBM i 7.4 is only going to be sold for a few more months.

  In announcement letter AD25-0894, which was dated September 16, Big Blue said that it would stop selling the IBM i 7.4 operating system on April 30, 2026. A bunch of other related system …

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• With Subscription Price, IBM i P20 And P30 Tiers Get Bigger Bundles

  July 8, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue has been noodling how it might tweak the subscription pricing for the P20 and P30 tiers since getting feedback on the first pass it did on its big iron Power Systems machines way back in February 2023. That feedback from the company’s biggest IBM i customers was not entirely glowing, but IBM has been clear that it would in the fullness of time move from perpetual software licensing to subscription pricing on all of its software, and that IBM i would not be an exception.

  To cushion the blow – and there is one because customers keep machines …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 12

  March 24, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  In this week’s IBM i PTF Guide, we contemplate the SF99741 patch and the following note from IBM:

  Recent change to contents – IBM Db2 Mirror for i (SF99668 Group PTF) has been removed from the order.

  Description:  This PTF group includes all PTF groups for the current IBM i release except the Cumulative PTF Package PTF group and WebSphere MQ PTF group. The PTF groups are included by listing them as related PTF groups. Use option 9 (Display related PTF groups) on the Work with PTF Groups (WRKPTFGRP) command to display the included PTF groups. Each time you order …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 47

  November 27, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Happy Belated Thanksgiving, welcome back to work, and pass the turkey and cranberry sauce leftovers if you don’t mind.

  Speaking of leftovers, there are some new patches for IBM i 7.2, which were updated on November 14. You can check out SF99719 720 Group HIPER – level 237 at this link and SF99718 720 Group Security – level 126 at that link.

  There is also a security vulnerability you need to be aware of, specifically Security Bulletin: Multiple Vulnerabilities in IBM Java SDK affect IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty due to the October 2023 …

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• What’s New with Db2 Mirror, PowerHA, and BRMS

  November 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

  There’s something for everyone in the new releases of IBM i that IBM will be shipping later this month. For administrators who revel in having well-run high availability, continuous availability, and tape backups, the new releases will not disappoint.

  The most substantial enhancements appear to have been saved for Db2 Mirror for i, which is IBM’s continuous availability solution for IBM i. The new management and monitoring features should bring some major improvements to how customers interact with the product.

  Some of the biggest changes are due to the addition of the new “Health Center” component to the Db2 Mirror …

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• Fall 2023 IBM i Tech Refresh Brings Something For Everyone

  October 11, 2023 Alex Woodie

  As expected, IBM yesterday unveiled its fall Technology Refresh (TR) for IBM i, with updates starting to become available on November 17. IBM announced no new products as part of the fall 2023 TR cycle, but it did spread the love around by giving just about everybody something to cheer about in IBM i 7.5 TR3 and 7.4 TR9.

  Lots of different products that make up the IBM i environment will see some pretty meaningful enhancements with this release. If you spend a lot of time in Navigator for i or ACS, you will see new stuff. We haven’t had …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 21

  May 22, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  As we report elsewhere in this week’s edition of The Four Hundred, there is a critical security vulnerability in the PowerVM hypervisor when it is running on Power9 and Power10 systems.

  This HIPER/Pervasive patch is described as fixing this: An internally discovered vulnerability in PowerVM on Power9 and Power10 systems could allow an attacker with privileged user access to a logical partition to perform an undetected violation of the isolation between logical partitions which could lead to data leakage or the execution of arbitrary code in other logical partitions on the same physical server.

  The Common Vulnerability and Exposure …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 16

  April 17, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  In a rare occurrence, there are no updates to the PTF Groups for the currently supported releases – IBM i 7.5, IBM i 7.4, and IBM i 7.3 – but there sure are a whole bunch of security vulnerabilities that IBM i shops have to deal with.

  First, there are two of them dealing with WebSphere Application Server Liberty. In PH50863:IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty is vulnerable to a denial of service, which you can find out more about here and which deals with CVE-2023-24998 CVSS 7.5. Then there is PH52739:IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty is vulnerable to a privilege …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 49

  December 7, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  It is another one of those weeks when there are a slew of security vulnerabilities to attend to. Four that we know of, to be precise.

  First, there is Security Bulletin: IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty is vulnerable to a denial of service due to Google protobuf-java (CVE-2022-3171, CVE-2022-3509), which you can read more about at this link. This vulnerability affects IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty versions 21.0.0.2 through 22.0.0.12.

  Second, there is Security Bulletin: ISC BIND on IBM i is vulnerable to denial of service due to memory leaks and a flaw in resolver code (CVE-2022-2795, CVE-2022-38177, CVE-2022-38178), …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 33

  August 15, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  First up, IBM has tweaked its temporary additional use policy for Power Systems software for migrations to Power E1080, Power E1050, and Power S1024 servers. You can read about it here.

  Here is the significance of this. When you do an upgrade, you get 70 days from install to use the systems software for free. That can be extended once for 40 days, and then that can be extended again, once, for 3 days. After that, you have to beg for more if you need more time to do the upgrade. IBM doesn’t care about partitions, it’s the host …

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