• Immutable Copies Are Only As Good As Your Validation

  May 23, 2022 Stan Wilkins

  A system can always be replaced, but the files and objects that comprise the application and the data that makes it useful can fall victim to all sorts of decay, neglect, or abuse in a modern system. And that is why we did backups to tape subsystems, or even tape libraries and then virtual tape libraries based on disk drives for so many years. And for those who cannot afford to have downtime or lost data, the IBM i base has been fortunate to have some of the best high availability clustering ever invented.

  With ransomware and malware attacks on …

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• More Price Hikes From IBM, Now For High End Storage

  May 16, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The price increases at IBM just keep coming as the company passes on higher component costs, and very likely higher manufacturing and support costs, that it is experiencing thanks to the coronavirus pandemic on to customers. Now we are seeing higher prices on high-end external storage.

  We have covered a number of IBM’s recent price hikes in the past several weeks, which you can see in the Related Stories section at the end of this report. But to characterize them briefly to put the new price increases into context, we have seen inflation in the prices for certain Power9 and …

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• There Were Actually More Power Systems Price Hikes Than We Thought

  April 25, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, we told you about two price hikes on Power Systems hardware, software, and services that were announced on April 13 and take effect for hardware and software on May 7 and for selected Software Maintenances services on July 1.

  One of the price changes came in our announcement letter roundup and the other came through the business partner network, and on a hunch on Sunday night with another story still needing to be written, I logged into the IBM announcement letter system to see if anything had happened while I was away last week sitting in the sun …

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• Guru: IBM i Experience Sharing, Case 3 – When Performance Issues Come From Without

  April 4, 2022 Satid Singkorapoom

  When I started my IT career 35 years ago, it was in the “centralized” universe that originated from the mainframe model. All core application codes ran in one — and only one — big iron that all users accessed with “dumb” terminals devoid of any GUI. Problem solving in AS/400 systems was frequently straightforward and not time consuming because most cases were anything but elusive.

  But the contemporary IT infrastructure universe has evolved into a big onion, with layers that we must peel while troubleshooting. I often find myself having to address a problem in multiple layers, and it no …

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• IBM Revs FlashSystem Line, Adds Cyber Vault

  February 14, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week debuted new members of its family of NVM-Express all-flash storage arrays, including the FlashSystem 7300 and FlashSystem 9500 arrays. It also launched a new release of the SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and rolled out the Cyber Vault to thwart ransomware.

  The FlashSystem 7300 replaces FlashSystem 7200 in the all-flash hierarchy of IBM systems, delivering a 25 percent performance boost. According to IBM’s hardware announcement, each 2U device will feature two node canisters, each with two 10-core Intel Cascade Lake processors and 128 GB of cache standard (with options ranging up to 1.5 TB). The array has …

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• IBM Preconfigures Power System Racks Running Oracle Database

  January 17, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you are one of the suppliers who still sells Unix and Linux servers for supporting back-end relational databases or platforms that compete against Unix and Linux iron, then Oracle is something you have to contend with either directly or indirectly. As the dominant database platform for running ERP, CRM, SCM, and other applications, you have to partner with Oracle even if you have to compete against the company.

  The good news is that at least Oracle no longer is selling big iron machinery based on the Solaris Unix and the Sparc processors that the company acquired when it bought …

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• Security Threats, They Are a Changin’

  November 17, 2021 Alex Woodie

  Ransomware came into 2021 like a lion, but rather than going out like a lamb, it seemed to get bigger and meaner. Even IBM i shops, which so often are protected from the wider security storm, felt the panic and sense of helplessness of having their previous data held for ransom. But early indications are that the security threat we’re talking about this time next year may be entirely different.

  It’s tough to overestimate the impact that ransomware had on American businesses and other institutions through the course of the year. We had indications that something big was unfolding a …

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• IBM Thwarts Ransomware in FlashSystem with New Data Safeguard

  July 26, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The steep uptick in ransomware attacks this summer has gained the full attention of business and tech leaders at businesses of all sizes. It also has the attention of IT vendors, including IBM, which last week added a new data protection mechanism to FlashSystem intended to help thwart ransomware attacks.

  Ransomware, which has been simmering on the security backburner for years, has roared to life this summer, thanks to several high-profile attacks that caused severe business disruptions, including Colonial Pipeline, JBS, and Scripps Health, among others. While the attacks on these large companies were headline-grabbing, they bely the full …

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• What’s New With BRMS, PowerHA, And Db2 Mirror

  April 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The latest IBM i Technology Refreshes (TRs) brought a number of enhancements to various parts of the operating system and related licensed products. That includes new stuff for its backup and recovery product, BRMS, as well as the two high availability offerings, PowerHA and Db2 Mirror.

  On the Backup and Recovery Media Services (BRMS) front, IBM added several new features with IBM i 7.4 TR4 and IBM i 7.3 TR10, including new SQL services that returns log information for BRMS activities. This new SQL service generates the same information that the Display Log for BRM (DSPLOGBRM) command does, but it …

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• IBM Unveils New FlashSystem Storage Arrays

  February 17, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week took the wraps off three new FlashSystem storage devices, including the enterprise-oriented FlashSystem 5200 as well as two entry-level offerings, the FlashSystem 5015 and 5035. All three devices make use of speedy NVMe flash drives in the primary enclosure, but can be outfitted with traditional spinning and less-speedy solid state drives (SSDs) in the expansion enclosures.

  Since early 2020, IBM has been phasing out its Storwize disk array line and emphasizing the FlashSystem line that replaces it. As part of that exercise, IBM renamed existing arrays, including the Storwize V5100, which became the FlashSystem 5100. It also …

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