• Power Systems Refreshes Flash Drives, Promises NVM-Express For IBM i

  April 29, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There was a time after Mark Olsen retired a few years back when the presentations concerning Power Systems hardware as it related to the IBM i platform were not as detailed as we were used to. But a new team of people are running the show now, and they are getting better and that helps us all understand what Big Blue is doing on the hardware front even better.

  As part of the April 23 announcements, IBM added a bunch of new storage and networking peripherals to its Power8 and Power9 system lineup. You can read all about it in …

  Read more

• IBM Brings Active-Active Mirroring Into Db2 For i Database

  April 24, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  As a platform that is approaching 40 years of deployment within enterprises that can’t afford downtime with their mission critical systems – that’s counting the System/38 as well as the AS/400 and its follow-ons as part of the same continuum – it is no surprise at all that IBM midrange systems running RPG and COBOL had some of the most sophisticated – and perhaps the only application-centric – clustering software ever developed.

  Concurrent with the launch of IBM i 7.4 this week, Big Blue is rolling out a new kind of database clustering, which is called Db2 Mirror, that is …

  Read more

• Power Systems Bucks The IBM Trend And Grows

  April 24, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The Power Systems business continues to grow, and that is good news for all IBM i shops, particularly for those of us who actively want for there to be boisterous competition in server processors and systems architecture. It comes as no surprise that we think Big Blue still has much to offer when it comes to engineering systems that provide real differentiation in the market. The ongoing growth of Power Systems – maintaining the happiness of the substantial IBM i and AIX customer bases and expanding the Linux base – is what is required for IBM to continue to make …

  Read more

• Let’s Try Converged Power Infrastructure One More Time

  April 8, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Do you remember the Flex System modular servers launched seven years ago this month? These were the innovative machines that Big Blue sold off to Lenovo about two and a half years after they were launched and they were ramping? Do you remember the PurePower follow-ons to these that came out in May 2015? Or did we all just imagine that happened?

  These modular machines, which were somewhere halfway between a rack server and a blade server, were put into preconfigured stacks and as the PureFlex system had cloud automation software to create a private cloud and then had …

  Read more

• IBM Clarifies Java Options Following Oracle License Crackdown

  April 3, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are wondering how to maintain their Java environments following Oracle’s recent decision to restrict access to Java runtimes and development tools should pay close attention to some recommendations that IBM is making concerning Java, particularly how it impacts Access Client Solutions (ACS).

  Oracle is slated to ship a critical security update for Java Standard Edition (SE) 8 in a week and a half. But unless you have bought a commercial license for Java SE 8, your business won’t be getting that update, which could leave your systems vulnerable. That’s because in late 2018, Oracle made some …

  Read more

• IBM Patches New Security Flaws in Java, OpenSSL

  April 3, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM this week patched a series of flaws in IBM i’s Java environment, including a pair of very serious problems in the OpenJ9 runtime that could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code, in addition to a series of less-severe Java vulnerabilities. The company also fixed a new flaw found in IBM i’s OpenSSL implementation.

  A total of seven Java flaws that impact IBM i versions 7.1 through 7.3 were addressed with one security bulletin issued by IBM on March 29. IBM issued Group PTFs for each release of the operating system to address them. A single OpenSSL flaw also …

  Read more

• What Vintage Is Your IBM i Wine?

  April 1, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It has been a long time since we have seen a new version of the IBM i operating system, but if history is any guide, we are on the cusp of yet another release of the platform. And thanks to the way Big Blue handles updates to the software, through its Technology Refresh incremental upgrade process, this will not be as dramatic an event as updating the operating system, middleware, database, and application development tools in the stack has been throughout most of the history of the IBM midrange.

  But there are plenty of OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i shops …

  Read more

• Rebuilding The Bottom Of The Pyramid

  March 25, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In last week’s issue of The Four Hundred, we told you about how Big Blue had extended the life of the Power8-based entry Power S812 Mini, announced on Valentine’s Day last year specifically to give entry IBM i shops a cheaper alternative than buying the Power S814 or Power S824. It seems to me that IBM needs to do some rejiggering of the way it bundles and prices this entry machine to get the installed base of customers using vintage hardware and operating systems to get current and stay there.

  We are under the impression that the number …

  Read more

• Five Skills You Don’t Need To Manage IBM i (And Two You Do)

  March 25, 2019 Tom Huntington

  Much has been said to debunk the myth of an IBM i skills shortage or decry it as a disappearing act. Yet, year after year, respondents to the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey by HelpSystems list IBM i skills as a top concern. The results also show that organizations are addressing these concerns by adding automation, modernizing development, and getting rid of obsolete technology that breeds the dreaded word: legacy.

  But why do we on IBM i continue to carry the perception that so-called “IBM i skills” are scarce? Is it because the keywords in our job listings don’t …

  Read more

• Midnight Commander Comes To IBM i

  March 20, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM i professionals who work extensively with files in the IFS will be happy to hear a new software utility has been ported to the IBM i PASE environment that could save them a bunch of time. The open source software, called Midnight Commander, gives developers and administrators a handy command line experience that can help speed up tasks, especially when giving commands to large number of files stored on remote machines.

  Midnight Commander was originally developed in 1994 as a file utility for UNIX, which was beginning to emerge from software labs to challenge minicomputer platforms of the day, …

  Read more

Previous Articles Next Articles