• How Much Does NVM-Express Flash Really Boost IBM i Performance?

  November 9, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  With the NVM-Express protocol, a storage overlay for the PCI-Express peripheral bus that allows flash to be addressed in a parallel fashion as flash in its own right and not as emulated disk storage using a SATA or SCSI protocol, the idea is to get those vintage storage drivers out of the way and let the operating system kernel speak directly to the flash. This is done so the impressive – and seemingly always growing – I/O bandwidth of flash can actually be brought to bear to speed up applications.

  Flash in general, and NVM-Express flash in particular, has been …

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• IBM i Turns In Good Numbers For Q3, Bolstering Power Systems

  October 26, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Historically speaking, the Power Systems division, now the Cognitive Systems division officially within IBM, has its worst period of sales in the first quarter of any year and its second worst 13-week revenue run in the third quarter of any year. And true to form, the third quarter of 2020 was not a great one for sales of Power iron, according to our model. That model is derived from IBM’s financial results and other data, and we update it every quarter when Big Blue reports to Wall Street.

  Thanks to the fact that the Power9 generation of machines is entering …

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• Recovery Point Provides Another Option for Full-Service DR

  October 21, 2020 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to full-service disaster recovery firms, most IBM i shops are aware of IBM Business Continuity and Recovery Services (BCRS) and Sungard, the two giants of the space. But there’s a third, slightly smaller option that nevertheless should be on their list: Recovery Point Systems of Germantown, Maryland.

  Recovery Point was formed nearly four decades ago to serve the document storage needs of businesses and organizations near the nation’s capital. As tape storage took off, the company evolved its business plan and served as secure repository for tape storage, sort of a regional Iron Mountain.

  Today, Recovery Point …

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• The Rest Of October’s Power Systems Software Announcements

  October 19, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The software stack in the Cognitive Systems division, which most of us still call the Power Systems division, is a lot wider and deeper than the IBM i stack, even though IBM i does represent a lot of the software functionality and generates a lot of the revenue stream for Power Systems machinery.

  In addition to the Technology Refresh updates for IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.3, which were announced on October 6 and which will be available on November 13, Big Blue also updated a bunch of other pieces of systems software that run on Power Systems, which …

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• IBM Goes All-In On Hybrid Cloud

  October 12, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Well, that was a bit of a surprise, and probably something that only obliquely matters to IBM i shops at the moment, but Big Blue’s top brass has decided to carve out its managed infrastructure services business from Global Services and spin it out as a new, publicly traded company.

  This business, which is tentatively being called NewCo until a real name is provided, is expected to be cut loose in a tax free manner and distributed to IBM’s shareholders by the end of 2021, so we have some time to assess the ramifications, if any, for the IBM i …

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• What’s the Deal? Battling the ‘L’ Word

  October 7, 2020 Alex Woodie

  It’s hard to read or write about the IBM i server or its big brother, the System z mainframe, without seeing the word “legacy” bandied about. These business systems have stood the test of time, providing value for millions of organizations, and the reward for that amazing longevity is to be called old and out of date. What’s the deal?

  We have searched for other terms to replace legacy, as if the word itself is the problem. Calling these “heritage” systems is one way people have tried to avoid the stigma associated with the “L” word (we’ve have even tried …

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• The Fall Technology Refreshes Are Almost Here

  October 5, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There has been a spring-fall rhythm to the cadence of software updates for along time, but the creation of the OpenStack cloud controller by NASA and Rackspace Hosting really snapped the commercial Linux distros into an April and October cycle of commercial rollups. And so, after many years of Technology Refreshes that follow the same rhythm, we come to expect updates to IBM i about now.

  And starting tomorrow, IBM will be rolling out the fall Technology Refreshes for the current releases. That would be IBM i 7.3 TR9 and IBM i 7.4 TR3. And these, unlike those partial Technology …

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• IBM i Tries On a Red Hat

  September 30, 2020 Alex Woodie

  When IBM initiated its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat in 2018, it was done to prepare Big Blue for the coming wave of innovation around things like containers, AI, clouds, and next-gen workloads. It was generally understood that most of the benefits would accrue in the X86 space. But apparently the plan called for sizable doses of IBM i, AIX, and mainframe, too.

  Last week at COMMON’s virtual POWERUp conference, IBM’s Joe Cropper, who works in Power development and holds the title IBM Master Inventor, laid out how the Red Hat acquisition will benefit IBM i and …

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• Does IBM i Need Its Own Zowe?

  September 30, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Getting open source software onto platforms like IBM i and System z is a big focus of IBM, its big iron customers, and the ecosystem of tool and service providers that tread these waters. In 2018, IBM, CA Technologies, and Rocket Software collaborated to create the Zowe framework as a part of the Linux Foundation’s Open Mainframe Project, with the goal to extend System z-based services into the greater open source IT landscape. Is it time for a similar effort on IBM i?

  When Zowe launched two years ago, the Open Mainframe Project (OMP) boasted that Zowe would “serve as …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 39

  September 30, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  This week, right off the bat, there are a few things you need to be aware of. First of all, there are microcode patches for a bunch of systems.

  Specifically, they are for MTMs – that is short for machine type/model in the business partner lingo – 9008-22L, 9009-22A, 9009-41A, 9009-42A, and 9223-22H. To save you from having to run around the Internet to figure out what machines they are, that is the Power L922 (a Linux-only machine), the Power S922, the Power S914, the Power S924, and the Power H922 for SAP HANA. You can find out more at …

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