• Say Sayonara To The IBM i Integrated Server

  August 21, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  One of the neat things about the AS/400 platform and its progeny is that it takes integration seriously, even to the extent of wrapping the OS/400 and IBM i platform around competitive platforms to bring them into the fold. The File Serving I/O Processor (FSIOP), which became the Integrated Netfinity Server, which became the Integrated xSeries Server, which became the IBM i Integrated Server is a good example of this.

  This integrated server approach brought a real, discrete, physical X86 server running Windows Server, OS/2, Novell NetWare, or SCO Unix under the skins of the AS/400 and IBM i Server. …

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• PowerHA Now Replicates To Multiple Targets Sans SAN

  May 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

  The new release of PowerHA will enable customers to use geographic mirroring to replicate their IBM i data to two or more targets. That one enhancement brings a host of benefits for customers not using SAN-based storage, including new deployment scenarios using on-prem, cloud, and hybrid topologies, as well as lower downtime for hardware upgrades, mirrored Db2 Mirror pairs, and lower RPO for tape backups.

  Prior to PowerHA SystemMirror, most IBM midrange customers who were using high availability (HA) software were using solutions based on logical replication, whereby changes to IBM i data are picked up from the local receiver …

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• IBM Updates Performance Guide For Latest Power10 Iron

  May 1, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  No matter what system you are talking about, no matter what kind of applications you are running, there are always ways to squeeze more performance out of the system. The IBM i platform running atop Power10 and earlier processors is no exception, and to that end, for several years now Big Blue has provided some guidance on pushing performance with each new CPU family and as new features are added to the OS/400 and IBM i software stack.

  The latest such update, according to Steve Will, chief architect of the IBM i platform, has just been published, and you can …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 16

  April 17, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  In a rare occurrence, there are no updates to the PTF Groups for the currently supported releases – IBM i 7.5, IBM i 7.4, and IBM i 7.3 – but there sure are a whole bunch of security vulnerabilities that IBM i shops have to deal with.

  First, there are two of them dealing with WebSphere Application Server Liberty. In PH50863:IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty is vulnerable to a denial of service, which you can find out more about here and which deals with CVE-2023-24998 CVSS 7.5. Then there is PH52739:IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty is vulnerable to a privilege …

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• Direct Attached Storage Gets Massive NVM-Express Expansion

  April 12, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The storage area network – a giant wonking storage server with lots of lossless Fibre Channel switching between servers that share access to virtual storage partitions – has been around for several decades now. And despite all of the talk of its ubiquity, and usefulness in driving up storage utilization across a bunch of servers and therefore helping drive down the cost of that storage while also enhancing its manageability and shareability, for many IBM i shops, using directly attached storage is what they want to do.

  There are reasons for this, of course. In many cases, the IBM i …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 15

  April 10, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  It is Spring Break in a lot of places, and also Easter and Passover as we go to press, and so it is not at all surprising that there is not a lot of activity in the IBM i PTF Guide this week. We took the opportunity to retire 7.2 worksheet, check the archives, and, DLB_PTF_04/01/23_B25N14.XLS for the last worksheet. Any changes to V7R2 going forward will be detailed here instead of the Guide.

  There are High Impact/Pervasive tweaks for all currently supported releases – IBM i 7.5, IBM i 7.4, and IBM i 7.3 – and a fix list …

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• Domino Runs on IBM i 7.5, But HCL Still Working on Power10

  March 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that use Domino to serve email and drive other forms of communication will be happy to know they can run Domino 12.2 on IBM i 7.5. However, if they want to run the setup on a Power10 server, they will need to wait a little longer for HCL to support it.

  Back in 2017, HCL Technologies took over development and maintenance of the Domino and Notes product line from IBM. Two years later, the India-based tech firm pushed out version 10 of Domino and Notes and related products (like Sametime, Traveler, and Verse), the first major …

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• IBM i Subscription Pricing Comes To All Power9 And Power10 Iron

  February 20, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue has been gradually “cloudifying” the packaging and pricing of its Power Systems hardware and IBM i software stack as an alternative to buying hardware outright and acquiring perpetual licenses to the operating system and pay Software Maintenance. Subscription-based pricing came to hardware and software for the Power10-based Power S1014 server running IBM i 7.5 last year, and now IBM i subscription pricing is more widely available.

  As outlined in announcement letter 223-030 on Valentine’s Day last week, IBM i subscription pricing is now available on all Power9 and Power10 servers, top to bottom, and on the four current …

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• IBM i Debugger Comes to VS Code

  February 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  At long last, IBM i developers can now debug their code in a development environment other than Rational Developer for IBM i or Merlin. The news came last week, when Liam Allan announced that the ILE debugging feature is now available in Code for IBM i, his third-party, IBM i-centric plug-in for Visual Studio Code.

  “Debugging ILE COBOL and RPGLE inside @code like it’s any other day!” Allan tweeted from his @Notesofbarry Twitter account. “I’m pumped for this release #ibmi.”

  Indeed, this day has been a long time in coming. Allan, who has not been shy about sharing his dislike …

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• 2023 IBM i Predictions, Part 2

  January 23, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Two thousand twenty-three is shaping up to be a transition year of sorts in the IBM i community, with midrange Power10 servers hitting the market, IBM i 7.3 (finally) meeting its end, and an economic recession looming. We tapped our network of IBM i prognosticators to help fill in the particulars with part two in this annual series.

  There’s been a security awakening in the IBM i community, and Robin Tatam, director of security technologies with Fortra (formerly HelpSystems), sees that translating into greater security controls as threats to the IBM i proliferate in 2023.

  “The IBM i community is …

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