• Finally, IBM i Cloud Dev Instances That Are Powerful And Cheap

  October 24, 2022 Chuck Paolillo

  Back in the old days, when IBM had relatively inexpensive entry AS/400 and iSeries machines and was willing to lease them at special low rates to developers, it was possible for software houses and independent code slingers to get their hands on machinery to create and modify applications. Those days are long gone, and it has been very difficult to replace that cheap and usable functionality in the marketplace.

  With Windows Server and Linux platforms, things are a lot easier because developers can create a variant of their X86 server environment right on their desktops or laptops, and if need …

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• IBM i 7.3 Loses Standard Support On September 30, 2023

  October 3, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue just got the IBM i 7.5 operating system and system software stack out the door for Power9 and Power10 machines back in May, and from that moment the clock was ticking on regular support for the IBM i release that came out in April 2016 and that represents the second most popular release on primary machines based on data from the most recent IBM i Marketplace Survey.

  Most operating system makers – there are not that many of them left in the datacenter these days – offer standard support for their releases and versions for seven years …

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• Trinity Guard Brings Security Suite Up to Speed with IBM i 7.5

  September 21, 2022 Alex Woodie

  IBM put a major focus on improving security with the release of IBM i 7.5 earlier this year, with stronger out-of-the-box default configurations, new password controls, and improved monitoring. With the launch of TG Suite 3.0, Trinity Guard is helping its customers get the most out of those security improvements.

  IBM made a slew of security improvements with the launch of IBM i 7.5, which it unveiled in May and which shipped soon thereafter. Highlights include the elimination of security level 20, a new password level 4 that includes 512-bit encryption, the elimination of default passwords, and new table functions …

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• The Scoop On The Full Subscription Power S1014 With IBM i

  September 12, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Even before the Power10 entry and midrange servers were announced by Big Blue on July 12, we did a thought experiment at the end of June about a rumored hardware-software-maintenance bundle on the single-socket Power S1014 server aimed at IBM i customers with a single monthly subscription price. And for fun, that thought experiment compared the monthly cost of a high-end iPhone smartphone with cell service and a data plan – somewhere between $75 and $80 – to what we expected such a full subscription-based, on premises Power S1014 would cost. We figured it would be around $50 per IBM …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 36

  September 12, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  Let’s get right into it. There are PDF transform issues with IBM i 7.5. This issue was encountered by our friends in San Diego: Thank you, Nancy, for sharing! They were receiving “Transformation task cancelled due to a print fidelity error” when converting from SCS to PDF. IBM issued the following PTFs to fix the issue:

  PTF ID                                  
  SI79773	 5770SS1  
  SI79689  5770TS1
  SI79684  5770TS1
  

  Now, let’s turn to Security Bulletin: Vulnerability in IBM Java SDK affects IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty due to July 2022 CPU plus deferred CVE-2021-2163. You can see more at this …

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• IBM Puts The Finishing Touches On PowerHA For IBM i 7.5

  August 15, 2022 Alex Woodie

  If you have been waiting to use the new release of PowerHA SystemMirror for IBM i 7.5, then we have good news for you: IBM has finally completed the paperwork necessary to enable customers to actually get it.

  Unless you have a soft spot in your heart for IBM product IDs and feature codes (we know you’re out there), the August 9 software announcement doesn’t have a whole lot of actionable information. IBM says that it has updated the product “with the necessary product IDs and feature codes to complete the required ordering and upgrade structure,” which is IBM-speak for …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 33

  August 15, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  First up, IBM has tweaked its temporary additional use policy for Power Systems software for migrations to Power E1080, Power E1050, and Power S1024 servers. You can read about it here.

  Here is the significance of this. When you do an upgrade, you get 70 days from install to use the systems software for free. That can be extended once for 40 days, and then that can be extended again, once, for 3 days. After that, you have to beg for more if you need more time to do the upgrade. IBM doesn’t care about partitions, it’s the host …

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• Now Is Your Chance To Ask IBM i CTO Steve Will Some Questions

  July 18, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  You have always wanted to pick the brains of Steve Will, the long-time IBM i chief architect and now chief technology officer and distinguished engineer for IBM i. Will is the first distinguished engineer within the IBM i organization and also its first CTO, and if there is something technical you have on your mind, there is nothing quite like starting at the top.

  Will is going to be one of the several speakers taking part in a live webcast hosted by Able One, a gold-level IBM i partner based in Kitchener, Ontario, that has been an IBM …

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• Exploring Security Applications for IBM i OLAP

  July 13, 2022 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i platform is typically thought of as a transactional server, and it does that job very well. But it also has solid analytical capabilities, thanks in large part to new OLAP features added many years ago with IBM i 7.3. Now the platform’s database guru, Scott Forstie, is looking for ways to promote greater use of these OLAP capabilities, and security is emerging as a top application.

  Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what a good thing you have. This appears to be the case with IBM i 7.3, which launched way back in 2016 and …

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• More IBM i Security Flaws Revealed

  July 13, 2022 Alex Woodie

  The summer slowdown might have started in your particular business, but things are just getting warmed up IBM security researchers, who disclosed a series of new vulnerabilities across IBM i products over the past couple of weeks, including IBM i Merlin, WAS Liberty, OpenSSL, the Digital Certificate Manager, and Zlib.

  On June 27, IBM disclosed that the collection of open source and proprietary tools and technology it’s brought together as IBM i Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration (Merlin) suffers from no fewer than 16 separate security flaws.

  Among the most series of these flaws is a CVE-2022-22965, a data binding …

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