• StarWind Hooks VTL to IBM i

  March 13, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are looking to add a virtual tape library (VTL) to their IT mix may want to check out StarWind, a Rocket Division Software spin-off that provides a range of storage virtualization and software-defined storage offerings. The company recently added support for IBM i with its VTL solution, opening up a new market for itself in the midrange.

  StarWind bills itself as a provider of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions for the enterprise remote office/branch office (ROBO), small and midsize business (SMB), and the edge. The company, which began in 2008 as a spin-off from Rocket Division Software …

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• PUB400: Your Free IBM i Playground

  March 4, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Search the Web for “free Linux server” and hundreds of results pop up. Do the same for “free IBM i server” and your results are much more limited. But what the universe of free IBM i servers lacks in quantity it makes up in quality thanks in large part to PUB400, a free IBM i instance that has been serving the midrange community for nearly a quarter century.

  Many IT Jungle readers undoubtedly are familiar with PUB400.com, which was started by Holger Scherer on a little AS/400 Model 150 back in 1999. Over the years, the site and the …

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• The State Of The Power Systems Base 2024: The Operating Systems

  February 12, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  What stays in the field longer? The hardware or the software? Well, if you are talking about the IBM i installed base, or indeed that of any legacy systems out there like z/OS or Windows Server, the hardware can often be upgraded easier than the software and so it tends to not stay in the field as long. On average, of course.

  In the real world, it all comes down to specifics. And you have to analyze and interpret the trend lines very carefully so as to not jump to the wrong conclusions.

  So it is with the decade long …

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• IBM Patches New Security Vulns In IBM i Components, Power Firmware

  February 12, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM has patched a series of moderate security vulnerabilities in IBM i products and Power firmware over the past two weeks. The IBM i flaws span Rational Developer for i (RDi), Access Client Solutions (ACS), and the Java development kit and runtime, while the Power flaw involves PowerVM and its communications with the Hardware Management Console (HMC).

  Concerns over security hit an all-time high in the IBM i community according to the IBM i Marketplace 2024 study conducted by Fortra. The survey found that 79 percent of IBM i professionals considered security a top concern, a 10 percent increase …

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• Hey, Where Did All Of The IBM i Redbooks Go?

  February 7, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Have you read any good IBM i Redbooks lately? Probably not, and we want to know why.

  Our intrepid colleague, Doug Bidwell, of IBM i PTF Guide fame among many other things, pointed out to us this week that it has been a long, long time since we have seen a Redbook or even a Redpaper concerning the IBM i platform. This seems peculiar to us, considering all of the new features and functions that have gone into IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.5. And even IBM i 7.3, which is going the way of all flesh.

  If you …

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• IBM Cloud Storage And BRMS Get Subscription Pricing

  January 22, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As you are well aware, Big Blue is in the middle of converting the IBM i software stack from perpetual software licensing and Software Maintenance pricing to straight-up subscription pricing. Now, subscription pricing has come to IBM Cloud Storage as well as to the venerable Backup, Recovery and Media Services for i (BRMS).

  The new pricing was revealed in announcement letter AD23-0531, and it appears to be an option, not a requirement. Remember, for IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.5 themselves, perpetual licensing based on IBM i software tiers will only be available through the end of March …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 49

  December 6, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome back to having to worry about security vulnerabilities and PTF patches. This week, there are two security vulnerabilities, a set of patches for IBM i 7.2, and HIPERS for IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.5 – among other things. Let’s do the vulnerabilities to start.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM Java SDK and IBM Java Runtime for IBM i are vulnerable to a remote attacker causing integrity impacts due to the libraries component (CVE-2023-22049), which you can find out more about here. The IBM i PTF Group numbers contain the fix for the vulnerability. Future PTF …

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• Old PHP and Other PASE Apps Break on IBM i 7.5

  November 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Customers running old versions of PHP and other PASE applications like Node.JS may run into compatibility issues when running on IBM i 7.5. The issue is due to an upgrade in OpenSSL support in the latest release of the IBM i operating system, according to Alan Seiden.

  Seiden, the principle of Seiden Group, first sounded the alarm in July about the problems running older, non-RPM versions of PHP and Node.JS on IBM i 7.5, which was upgraded from OpenSSL version 1.0.2 to version 1.1. In October, he recently published a blog post restating the issue.

  “While [the OpenSSL upgrade …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 43

  October 23, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Busy, busy, busy. That is what the good people at IBM Rochester have been in the past week, with a slew of PTFs for the currently supported releases – that is IBM i 7.5 and IBM i 7.4 that are on standard support and IBM i 7.3 that just went into extended support at the end of September, a trio of security vulnerabilities in the IBM i stack, and two group PTFs for the IBM i 7.2 release that is supposed to be kaput.

  Let’s start with the security vulnerabilities.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM i is vulnerable to …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 41

  October 9, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Here is something interesting. There is a new cume for IBM i 7.3, just after it goes out of standard support and is now on extended support. For years, we have been after IBM to put a cume out when it stops supporting a release, kind of a summation at end of life. This is the first time Big Blue has managed to do that.

  It is likely a coincidence, but it should have always been policy. It is difficult to round up docs and PTFs for an end of life product two years after the fact. Having a stake …

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