• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 46

  November 13, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  There’s a bunch of stuff going on this week in IBM i PTF Land. So let’s just get to it.

  First, we have a security vulnerability, which you can find out more about in Security Bulletin: IBM i is vulnerable due to a flaw in Samba which could allow an attacker to bypass security restrictions (CVE-2023-4091), located at this link. The issues can be fixed by applying a PTF to IBM i. IBM i releases 7.4, 7.3, and 7.2 will be fixed. The IBM i PTF number for 5770-SS1 contains the fix for the vulnerability.

  IBM i Release	5770-SS1 

  …

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• What’s New with Db2 Mirror, PowerHA, and BRMS

  November 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

  There’s something for everyone in the new releases of IBM i that IBM will be shipping later this month. For administrators who revel in having well-run high availability, continuous availability, and tape backups, the new releases will not disappoint.

  The most substantial enhancements appear to have been saved for Db2 Mirror for i, which is IBM’s continuous availability solution for IBM i. The new management and monitoring features should bring some major improvements to how customers interact with the product.

  Some of the biggest changes are due to the addition of the new “Health Center” component to the Db2 Mirror …

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• In A Parallel Universe, There Is An IBM i Data Warehouse, Too

  November 8, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Over the many years that we have been watching the Power Systems business – which is all of them, starting with the original RS/6000 announcement in February 1990, the first announcement we ever attended and at IBM’s original headquarters at 590 Madison in New York City – we have seen time and time again how Big Blue has rolled out parallel cluster data warehouse configurations for its AIX customers.

  Somehow, the IBM i platform and predecessor OS/400 platform have never been shown the same respect. Despite the fact that there are midrange and large enterprise customers who would very likely …

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• Remain Bolsters TD/OMS in v16 Release

  November 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Rogue or uninformed programmers will be shut out of making negative code changes to their IBM i applications with TD/OMS V16.0 Milestone 1, the inaugural release of the next major version of Remain Software’s IBM i change management software. New dashboards, training, and ChatGPT integrations also grace this new release.

  According to Remain Software CTO Wim Jongman, the new arbitrary code execution protection feature delivered with TD/OMS V16.0 last month was developed in response to customers that were suffering when programmers exploited their freedom to do not-so-smart things with the organization’s IBM i code.

  Sometimes, the freedom is necessary. “For …

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• ATS Bolsters Power Cloud, IBM i Data Collection Suite

  November 8, 2023 Alex Woodie

  ATS Group announced yesterday that it has expanded its Power Cloud, the IBM Power-based private cloud that offers IBM i, AIX, and Linux runtimes. The company also announced that it has enhanced the IBM i data collection capabilities in Galileo Suite, its collection of IT monitoring and observability.

  ATS Group is an IBM business partner based in Malvern, Pennsylvania. The company says it has managed thousands of customer environments in its Power Cloud, which is spread across four geographically separate data centers.

  In a blog post yesterday, the company announced that it has expanded its private cloud offering. The company …

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• Kyndryl Inspects The Modernization Plans Of IBM i And Mainframe Shops

  November 6, 2023 Alex Woodie

  What paths are IBM i and mainframe users taking in terms of application modernization and digital transformation, and what sorts of results are those efforts producing? Those are good questions, and they are ones that Kyndryl, the former IBM Global Technology Services arm, provides some answers to in a new report.

  Kyndryl commissioned Coleman Parkes Research to survey 500 IBM i and mainframe shops from around the world about their plans for application modernization and transformation. The survey results form the basis for its appropriately named 2023 State of Mainframe Modernization Survey Report, which you can download here. …

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• Thoroughly Modern: How X-Analysis Transforms IBM i Challenges Into Solutions

  November 6, 2023 Ray Everhart

  All the modernization conversations I have had over the years with IBM i clients seem to have one common theme: velocity. Or the lack of it, to be specific. Over 70 percent of them reportedly have a tough time managing their systems while embracing modernization, driven by valid reasons like a rapidly evolving business landscape, the need to become more agile and efficient as they expand their business, and a considerable number of IBM i staff retiring.

  But the fact remains that they can’t get the changes they need in place fast enough. How do we address this problem in …

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• Guru: Procedure Driven RPG Means Keeping Your Variables Local

  November 6, 2023 Gregory Simmons

  One of the things I love most about procedure driven RPG is that it allows me to keep my variables locally defined. Imagine this horror story that happens all too often in RPG shops.

  Jake: “Hey Gregory, Accounting just called; seems the rebalancing report program is acting up. Didn’t I hear you were working on that the other day?”

  Me: “Ugh, yes. All I had to do was reset this field that was used to show or not show the totaling line between branches. I tested in my library and the fix worked fine.”

  Jake: “Yeah, I had to change …

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• Power Systems Software Gets Its Updates And Tweaks

  November 6, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It would not be a spring or fall IBM i Technology Refresh cycle if there were not some improvements to the auxiliary systems software that is an adjunct to the Power Systems stack. By which we mean the PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor, the PowerVC custom edition of the OpenStack cloud controller, the Hardware Management Console, the Cloud Management Console, and the system firmware for the Power iron itself.

  In announcement letter AD23-0498, you will see that all of these have been updated and you will also see how they are all intertwined with each other, cross-supporting their respective updates. …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 45

  November 6, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  What is new this week, you ask? Well, in IBM i PTF Land, there is a PTF patch for IBM i 7.2 – yeah, you heard that right – that was released on Halloween day and that addresses a security vulnerability that was made public on October 6 (CVE-2023-40377) relating to IBM Backup, Recovery & Media Services for i. Because of this flaw, the IBM i stack is vulnerable to a local privilege escalation, which is not a good thing.

  The security vulnerability patch is being made available even though IBM i 7.2 was taken off regular Software Maintenance on …

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