• IBM Rolls Out ACS 1.1.8.5

  August 12, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week introduced a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS), the popular IBM i client that’s used by administrators, programmers, and engineers alike. There are enhancements to Run SQL Scripts, new 5250 viewing options, and a performance boost for viewing selected files on the IFS with version 1.1.8.5, among other mostly minor updates.

  According to the release notes associated with the new iteration of ACS, IBM made a handful of changes with version 1.1.8.5.

  Let’s start with the improvements to Run SQL Scripts, which is an increasingly popular utility in ACS that leverages the power of SQL and …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 3

  January 22, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  We are rolling along and singing a PTF song here as January is ramping up and everyone working on IBM i is getting back to work after the holidays.

  First of all, the new J-Resave for 7.3 has been tested on a slip of the LIC, which we have been talking about for the past month, and it works! So this is very good news for customers who have created logical partitions without the Hardware Management Console (HMC). The default SST profiles Expired Passwords after PTF upgrade – see this link: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/1127871. And here is the rest of the …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 2

  January 15, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  As you well know, there is an issue with LPARs that are hanging on machines that have the latest Technology Refreshes applied to IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4 in cases where the Hardware Management Console (HMC) is not managing the partitions. The details of the issue with the Technology Refreshes are outlined in APAR MA48101, and what it means is that a guest partition created with Virtual Partition Manager (VPM) inside SST or Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) will hang on IPL after the apply of the TRs. This gets real elaborate, so we strongly suggest you review …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 1

  January 13, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  We want to remind you once again about the LPARs that are hanging on machines that have the latest Technology Refreshes applied to IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4 in cases where the Hardware Management Console (HMC) is not managing the partitions. The details of the issue with the Technology Refreshes are outlined in APAR MA48101, which is essentially a bug report that warns customers of an issue with the software stack and oftentimes gives hints about when and how it will be fixed.

  Here is the issue in a nutshell: IPL-SRCC6003962-WAIT Hang with IBM i 7.3 with …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 21, Numbers 51 And 52

  January 6, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  The PTFs keep rolling even through the holidays, so this is our time to get caught up with the last two weeks of patches in 2019 as the new year is beginning.

  In PTF Number 51, we dug a little deeper into the issue we found out about just as The Four Hundred was going on hiatus where LPARs are hanging on machines that have the latest Technology Refreshes applied to IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4 in cases where the Hardware Management Console (HMC) is not managing the partitions.

  The details of the issue with the Technology Refreshes …

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• Cloud Walkers Makes LPARs More Native On IBM i

  December 16, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There are a few different technologies that have been grafted onto the OS/400 and IBM i platform from the outside that are just architected differently from and run somewhat counter to the integrated nature of that platform, and all of them are involved, in one way or another, with managing logical partitions on the Power Systems platform and all of them make IBM i shops cranky.

  They are, in no certain order: the PowerVM hypervisor, the Hardware Management Console (HMC), the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS), the PowerVC variant of OpenStack that is native to Power Systems, and external disk arrays, …

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• Power S812 Gets Another Reprieve, And Other Power Systems Stuff

  December 2, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For whatever reason, Big Blue did not create a cut-down version of the Power9 entry server aimed at the smallest of the small businesses that run themselves on the IBM i platform. Meaning there was no Power S912 or Power S912 Mini replacement for the Power S812 and its specially priced Power S812 Mini. (The former is based on the Power9 chip, while the latter is based on the older Power8 chip, which has a lot less oomph per core.)

  Back in March, IBM extended the life of the Power S812 and its Mini variant until November 29 of this …

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• Systems Software Stack Tweaked For Power Systems

  October 14, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As part of the October Power Systems announcements, IBM has made some minor tweaks to the systems software stack that runs underneath IBM i, AIX, and Linux on its Power-based systems.

  In announcement letter 219-451, IBM reveals enhancements to its PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor, the PowerVC implementation of the OpenStack cloud controller (which presumably has a pretty short life now that IBM owns Red Hat), and its Virtual HMC (vHMC) hardware management console for Power iron.

  The details are a bit thin, but IBM has made improvements with PowerVM V3.1.1 so Live Partition Mobility live migration of logical partitions …

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• IBM i 7.3 And 7.4 Get Their Autumn Tech Refreshes

  October 9, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue is hosting its IBM Systems Technical University this week, and used the occasion to quietly launch the Technology Refreshes, or TRs as they are known, for IBM i releases 7.3 and 7.4. If you were running around the Venetian Hotel, you could probably stitch together the extent of the updates to the platform, and to be honest, we are still trying to get all of the details, which were not available as we went to press.

  We will tell you what we know now, and then circle back and drill down into the details as appropriate.

  First of …

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• You’ve Still Got Friends In High Places

  September 23, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For the past 25 years, and across a total of 78 meetings over that time, the Large User Group, or LUG as it is known, has been helping Big Blue keep the AS/400 and IBM i platform on the right track for the very large enterprises that have the system as their platform for running the mission critical applications that are at the heart of the business. The LUG has put forward thousands of requirements to IBM – both things that the organization wants IBM to do and other things that it wants IBM to stop doing – and …

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