• IBM Unveils ‘Migrate While Active’ Cloud Offering, HA Subscriptions

  October 23, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM yesterday announced new subscription offerings for its continuous availability and high availability products for IBM i, Db2 Mirror and PowerHA, respectively. It also announced a “migrate while active” program to move IBM i installations to servers running in IBM’s PowerVS cloud or other Power-based clouds.

  For the past two-and-a-half years, IBM has been moving its IBM i software stack, including the operating system as well as supporting facilities, like BRMS, and Cloud Storage Solutions, away from perpetual licenses and toward subscriptions. At the same time, it’s been simplifying the stack by including more utilities, such as Performance Tools and …

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• A Match Made In The Midrange: IBM i And FlashSystem

  June 3, 2024 Steven McIver

  If you are only looking at IBM i from the “green screen,” not much has changed over the years. We run mostly the same commands and access the same operating system menus. It can seem like time has stood still and IBM i has not changed at all.

  However, from the infrastructure point of view, that is certainly not the case. In this article, I want to focus on the popular external storage option for IBM i systems, which is FlashSystem. There have been some great new features that have been added lately to make the storage administrator’s life easier. …

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• Power10 Upgrade Considerations You Need to be Aware Of

  October 4, 2023 Steve Pitcher

  It has been over a year since Power10 servers have been available from IBM. After many conversations, configurations, proposals, installations, and project debriefs, I wanted to use this article as a point of reflection on some of the nuances around Power10 and the End of Service dates for IBM i 7.3 and Power8 hardware.

  Let’s just jump right into it because we are all busy.

  First: A hardware change is most often used to facilitate the upgrade path to a newer version of the IBM i operating system.

  The Power8 servers top out at supporting IBM i 7.4. They’re …

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• A Smattering Of Power Systems Announcements

  December 12, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We keep saying that IBM is winding down its announcement stream as 2022 comes to a close, but there is still a trickle of things being announced by Big Blue, both new products and withdrawals, that relate to the Power Systems platform and its adjacent external storage.

  First of all, in announcement letter 122-134, IBM is allowing customers – as promised back at the COMMON POWERUp event in October – to run the AIX and Linux operating systems on that special configuration of the Power 1022s machine that has two four-core Power10 dual chip modules (DCMs) in the box …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 47

  November 28, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  It is a busy, busy week for the IBM i PTF Guide, folks. So get some coffee. There are a bunch of security vulnerabilities that you need to take a look at, and there are also some recommended fixes that are not included in either the PTF groups or the cumulative PTF updates.

  First, there is Security Bulletin: IBM Transform Services for IBM i is vulnerable to denial of service, buffer overflow, and allowing attacker to obtain sensitive information due to multiple vulnerabilities, which you can read more about at this link. The fixes for this vulnerability can …

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• IBM Bolsters Availability, Backup with Latest TRs

  October 19, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Nobody wants downtime or data loss, but companies’ appetite for both are on the decline as customers increasingly demand 24/7 service. IBM i shops have a lot of solutions to choose from when it comes to ensuring uptime and avoiding data loss, both of which have been enhanced with the latest round of Tech Refreshes (TRs) from IBM.

  IBM unveiled updates to its two flagship availability offerings for IBM i with the October 11 announcement of IBM i 7.5 TR1 and 7.4 TR7, including Db2 Mirror and PowerHA SystemMirror for IBM i. It also brought new features to Backup and …

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• IBM Unveils Fall 2022 Tech Refreshes for IBM i

  October 12, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM yesterday announced Technology Refreshes for its two most current IBM i operating systems, including 7.5 and 7.4. Security continues to be a big driver of new functionality with 7.5 TR1 and 7.4 TR7. But the fall TRs bring a bevy of enhancements across all areas, including the database, IBM i services, open source, application development, and analytics, among others.

  Security has been the number one concern for CIOs for a few years now, and IBM has responded with a number of new features in IBM i. Some of the new security features exist in IBM i Navigator, the GUI …

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• IBM Puts The Finishing Touches On PowerHA For IBM i 7.5

  August 15, 2022 Alex Woodie

  If you have been waiting to use the new release of PowerHA SystemMirror for IBM i 7.5, then we have good news for you: IBM has finally completed the paperwork necessary to enable customers to actually get it.

  Unless you have a soft spot in your heart for IBM product IDs and feature codes (we know you’re out there), the August 9 software announcement doesn’t have a whole lot of actionable information. IBM says that it has updated the product “with the necessary product IDs and feature codes to complete the required ordering and upgrade structure,” which is IBM-speak for …

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• Ragged Flash: A Smooth Solution to a Thorny Problem

  June 15, 2022 Alex Woodie

  There are many benefits to using IBM’s FlashCopy services, which delivers a nearly instantaneous copy of a customer’s IBM i environment. But there are also challenges, such as when a FlashCopy is paired with an IPL, which had the habit in busy environments of throwing the source and the copy out of synch. IBM has addressed this problem with “ragged flash.”

  Ragged flash is one of the new database features delivered in IBM i 7.5 (it’s not available in 7.4). Scott Forstie, the database architect for IBM i, identified the ragged flash as one of his most favorite new database …

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• Database And Developer Enhancements In IBM i 7.5 And 7.4 TR6

  May 9, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM has made a number of enhancements to the Db2 for i database with the launch of IBM i 7.5, which becomes generally available tomorrow. It also is bringing new features for developers, including changes to Integrated Web Services (IWS), which will improve REST integration.

  Most of the new features added to Db2 for i are only available in IBM i 7.5, which will give users a reason to adopt it. However, there are a few enhancements added in IBM i 7.4 Technology Release 6, which doesn’t ship until May 24.

  As we previously reported, IBM i 7.5 expands …

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