• Another Non-TR “Technology Refresh” Happens With IBM i TR6

  May 5, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you know, Big Blue released IBM i 7.6 and IBM i 7.5 Technology Refresh 6 (TR6) on April 8, with the expectation that both would ship to customers on April 18. IBM i 7.6 was detailed in announcement letter AD25-0031 and IBM i 7.5 TR6 was revealed in announcement letter AD25-0077. We’re all good there. And many of the features in IBM i 7.6 were backcast as a refresh into IBM i 7.5 with TR6, if you read the announcement letters.

  IBM i 7.6 was available on April 18 as expected, but we know a bunch of people …

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• IBM i 7.6 Brings More Security Improvements Than Just MFA

  April 14, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is the big headliner with IBM i 7.6, which IBM begins shipping at the end of the week. This is good and right, since IBM i customers have been begging IBM to add MFA to the platform for so long. But the new IBM i release brings several other major security enhancements that customers will appreciate too, including a new command to disable non-secure connections, new encryption algorithms, streamlined regulatory compliance, and an easy way to tell what security patches have been applied, among others.

  IBM has made it clear that it is taking security seriously on …

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• IBM i 7.6 Delivers “Massive Security Improvement” With Built-In MFA

  April 8, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Big Blue today announced IBM i 7.6, the first new release of the operating system in three years. While version 7.6 brings a range of enhancements, arguably the biggest new feature is the addition of multi-factor authentication directly into the operating system, which will make adopting MFA simple and represent a “massive security improvement” at no additional cost to IBM i shops, the IBM i security architect said.

  MFA has emerged as an industry requirement to improve security and prevent unauthorized access to applications and data. Most North American banks require customers to enter additional codes that are texted or …

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• What’s New With IBM PowerVS In 2025?

  April 2, 2025 Alex Woodie

  It has been six years since IBM launched IBM Power Virtual Server, its public cloud offering for IBM i workloads. Adoption started slowly but has picked up in recent years as IBM fleshed out the offering and expanded it to more datacenters. As we enter the second quarter, IBM is banking on several new features to help it attract more IBM i customers to PowerVS.

  Last October, IBM offered PowerVS in 21 IBM Cloud datacenters around the world, including 650 Power Systems customers. Doris Conti, the vice president of Power Systems product management, told The Four Hundred that IBM had …

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• Steve Will Lifts the Curtain On “Major IBM i Announcement,” But Just A Smidge

  March 3, 2025 Alex Woodie

  If you haven’t heard yet, here it is: IBM is planning to make a major IBM i announcement soon. IBM i chief architect Steve Will said as much during his recent IBM i Guided Tour. While Will shared a general outline of what IBM has in mind for the major announcement, specifics still are few and far between.

  Will, who also holds the titles of IBM i CTO and IBM distinguished engineer, teased the IBM i community with his one-hour February 12 presentation, which is titled IBM i in 2025 – A Strategic Preview. You can access a recording …

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• Coming To You Live In A Datacenter Very Near You, Or One Far Away, Too

  February 24, 2025 Ash Giddings

  We are at a pivotal moment in IBM i history regarding migration options. Public cloud solutions like IBM Power Virtual Server and Skytap on Azure have matured to the point where they are now viable for production workloads, shedding the novelty value that surrounded them during the era which coincided with the launch of IBM’s Power9 machines, to a lesser extent, Power10 iron.

  Additionally, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) worldwide are well equipped with Power10 hardware and the expertise to support both migrations and ongoing operations. Furthermore, on-premise Power10 delivers impressive price-to-performance benefits, with Power11 poised to raise the bar even …

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• State Of The Power Systems Base 2025: The Operating Systems

  February 10, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  What is more important: Keeping a server platform current or keeping its operating system current?

  That is a trick question, and it is tricky in two ways. First, you should keep both hardware and software current, or more precisely, keep both as current as the applications, the budget, and good sense permits. A server older than five years is going to start having component failure (usually with the disk drives and fans), and one that is 10years old has the chance of a much more catastrophic failure. However, with a machine that is five to ten years old, you can …

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• Dell And Big Blue Call It Quits On Storage Driver Support For IBM i

  December 9, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It looks like IBM and sometime rival Dell Technologies are having a tiff over the licensing of technology that allows disk arrays descended from the venerable Symmetrix arrays created by EMC more than three decades ago to link to descendants of the AS/400 platform and OS/400 operating systems created three and a half decades ago.

  The fallout from what we presume is that a technology licensing fee agreement between Dell and IBM is similar, we think, to the one between IBM and the company that owns Information Builders. In October 2023, out of the blue, IBM announced that it was …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 45

  December 2, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  It was pretty quiet in PTF Land just after The Four Hundred went on publishing hiatus, and we are still playing catch up getting out the sequential changes to the IBM i patch stack and any security vulnerabilities you may need to be aware of.

  The good news this time around is that we have not run across any security issues. So carry on, and have a look at the High Impact/Pervasive (HIPER) and security patches that have been put out for IBM i 7.3, IBM i 7.4, and IBM i 7.5.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by …

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• IBM Bolsters Db2 for i With Tech Refreshes

  October 23, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM is delivering a handful of new database capabilities with the latest batch of Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.5 and 7.4, including new function to create Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs), new capabilities for the security data mart, and various enhancements to SQL-based IBM i Services.

  A UUID is a random 36-character, 128-bit alphanumeric string that can be used to identify something, such as a row or table in a database, with near certainty that the identifier is unique, has never been used before, and will never be used again.

  The UUID system was first implemented by the Open Software …

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