• 2023 IBM i Predictions, Part 3

  January 25, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Security. Cloud. AI. The IBM i installed base moves with the general IT tide, which makes these hot topics for all. But what about specific IBM i things, like the availability of IBM i jobs and the difficulty in finding a good RPG developer? These are topics we are tackling in our third – and final – round of 2023 predictions.

  Bob Langieri, the IBM i recruiter who owns Excel Technical Services, has his pulse on the IBM i job situation, particularly in his Southern California region. 2023 looks to be a mixed bag, job-wise, he says.

  “In the …

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• 2022: An IBM i Year In Review: Part 2

  December 19, 2022 Alex Woodie

  In part one of this now annual recap of the IBM i world that we do here at IT Jungle, we reminisced on the biggest stories of the first six months of the year. There was quite a bit going on, with the launch of IBM i 7.5 and more. But getting into the last half of the year – now that’s where the real action began.

  July

  The first full month of summer started off with a bang when IBM, after much anticipation, unveiled the long-awaited scale-out Power10 machines. The Power10 rollout included the S1014, with …

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• 2022: An IBM i Year in Review, Part One

  December 14, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Well, it’s that time of year again – time to look back on the year and contemplate what happened. It was another eventful year in the midrange, with new servers and new operating systems. The IBM i user and vendor communities also worked to make it a rewarding year.

  2021 started innocently enough back in . . .

  January

  Cybercriminals earned a gazillion demerits for their early 2021 Christmas present to cybersecurity professionals: Log4j, the most critical security vulnerability to hit the IT world in years. With a perfect CVSS severity rating of 10, Log4j sent security professionals scrambling in …

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• A Smattering Of Power Systems Announcements

  December 12, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We keep saying that IBM is winding down its announcement stream as 2022 comes to a close, but there is still a trickle of things being announced by Big Blue, both new products and withdrawals, that relate to the Power Systems platform and its adjacent external storage.

  First of all, in announcement letter 122-134, IBM is allowing customers – as promised back at the COMMON POWERUp event in October – to run the AIX and Linux operating systems on that special configuration of the Power 1022s machine that has two four-core Power10 dual chip modules (DCMs) in the box …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 50

  December 12, 2022 Doug Bidwell

  It is another week of interesting security vulnerabilities in the IBM i world, so brace yourself for some research and patching. There are a slew of vulnerabilities that affect the Hardware Management Console for Power Systems, which means any of you IBM i shops that are using relatively large Power machines. There are five new ones, above and beyond the ones we have covered in recent weeks.

  First, there is Security Bulletin: Vulnerability in Bind (CVE-2021-25219) affects Power HMC, which you can read about here.

  Affected Product(s)	Version(s)
  HMC V10.1.1010.0	V10.1.1010.0 and later
  HMC V9.2.950.0		V9.2.950.0 and later
  Product		

  …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 24, Number 48

  December 5, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  To start right off, there is a security vulnerability in the Hardware Management Console, so those of you who have larger Power Systems that have their logical partitions managed by this out-of-band controller had better listen up. Specifically, check out Security Bulletin: Vulnerability in Bind (CVE-2021-25219) affects Power HMC, which you can read about more here.

  The fixes for this security vulnerability are as follows:

  Product		VRMF			APAR			Remediation/Fix	
  Power HMC	V9.2.950.0 SP3 ppc	MB04373		MH01944
  Power HMC	V9.2.950.0 SP3 x86	MB04372		MH01943
  Power HMC	V10.1.1020.0 SP1 ppc	MB04363		MF70302
  Power HMC	V10.1.1020.0 SP1 x86	MB04362		MF70301
  

  As we …

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• IBM “Harmonizes” Power Systems, Storage, And Software Prices Upward

  November 28, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The worsening economic conditions and the strengthening of the U.S. dollar against other currencies is forcing companies to do two things: Raise their prices in the United States in some cases, and raise their prices a little more than that in Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Japan.

  Last week, IBM did the latter on Power Systems and storage hardware and software, with the price increase taking effect on January 1, 2023. So if you are outside of the United States, you have time to close whatever deals you have in progress at the lower prices if you hustle …

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• Court Throws Out Lawsuit From Chinese Power Systems Partner Against Big Blue

  November 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is not often that we get any insight into the geopolitical workings of the Power Systems business that is central to this publication and to all of you who work on the IBM i platform. Often, the only way we learn anything is when two parties sue each other in court. Such is the case with the lawsuit filed against Big Blue back in September 2021 by Beijing Neu Cloud Oriental System Technology. The lawsuit, as it turns out, was tossed out of court last week.

  China has presented as many challenges as it has opportunities for all …

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• A Few More Power Systems Updates Before 2022 Ends

  November 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It has been a pretty eventful 2022 for the Power Systems line, and Big Blue has a few ends to tie up before the year comes to a close. And that means we have a few more things to tell you here and there.

  First up, there is a new feature on the high-end “Denali” Power E1080 server announced last September as the first member of the Power10 family of systems that lets customers mix OMI differential DIMM (DDIMM) memory sticks of different capacities on the Power10 single chip module (SCM) that is at the heart of the system.

  When …

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• IBM Gives Temporary Reprieve For Power8 Core And Memory Activations

  November 14, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue is pretty generous when it comes to having features for past generations of machines available for purchase, even when they are two generations back from whatever it is currently selling. But sooner or later, IBM wants to sell the new machines and it stops selling the old stuff. Even if it is only processor and memory activations on machines that are already in the field, which is the easiest sale in the world because IBM doesn’t really have to do much.

  This may be the most profitable kind of sale that Big Blue does, but sooner or later, …

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