• A Smorgasbord Of Power Systems Stuff

  September 19, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It is usually pretty quiet on the IT front in the wake of the American Labor Day holiday, especially with a lot of European countries also having bank holidays around that time and many schools just starting back up again. Here in 2022, it is no different, although IBM did uncharacteristically launch the full subscription entry Power S1014 server aimed at IBM i customers on September 6.

  In any event, in the weeks surrounding the holiday, Big Blue did a bunch of stuff relating to the Power Systems platform and we want to tell you about it so you stay …

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• The Security Awareness Of People Is The Important Firewall In IT

  September 19, 2022 John Fehr

  Your company can have the best firewalls, the best intrusion detection and protection systems, and the best sensors and filters all wrapped around the IT organization. Your company can have the IBM i platform, legendary for its rock-solid security, locked down with the tightest security, and everyone can change their strong passwords frequently. Your company can have administrators using tools to monitor exit points and the Integrated File System that can be a breeding ground for viruses. Your company can have firewalls and antivirus software installed on every desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphone that comes in contact with your infrastructure. …

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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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• Moving To The Cloud Should Be Easier Than Switching Homes

  August 29, 2022 Rich Spring

  If the modern economy has taught us anything, it is that ownership is sometimes overrated. There are many things that we are accustomed to buying that we might better rent at a slight premium.

  The cloud IT infrastructure is one of those things. This new deployment and purchasing model is a boon for the workloads we rely on. Done right, a move to the cloud should be relatively painless, if possibly a little time consuming.

  But for a lot of IBM i customers, the idea of moving to infrastructure outside of local control is scary, not because of their fear …

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• Big Blue Taps FalconStor To Move Data To PowerVS Cloud And Protect It

  August 22, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When IBM i shops want to move some or all of their applications to the cloud, they have a lot of options. But there is still only one cloud that is designed and run by the same company that actually makes the Power Systems server and the IBM i operating system and database platform. And that, of course, is the Power Systems Virtual Server, colloquially known as PowerVS these days.

  Over the longest of hauls, we expect that a fair number of IBM i shops will use the cloud in some capacity, and some will move their infrastructure entirely to …

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• Power10 Midrange Machine: The Power E1050

  August 15, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  This is fifth part of our in-depth coverage of the entry and midrange Power10 machines that were announced on July 12. This week, we end the hardware deep dives with a look at the Power E1050 midrange machine. This is one of the best and most capable servers that Big Blue has ever designed, and it is a damned shame that it does not run the IBM i operating system.

  But, as we have pointed out before, it can any time IBM is convinced by enough of you that it should. The lack of IBM i support is a marketing …

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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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• Power10 Entry Machines: The Power S1022 And Power L1022

  August 1, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  This is third part of our in-depth coverage of the entry and midrange Power10 machines that Big Blue launched on July 12, which will focus on the Power S1022 and its Linux-only variant, the Power L1022. Not to be confused with the Power S1022s – that is a small “s” not a plural – that we covered last week.

  We will cover the Power S1024 and Power L1024 machines next week, and then finish the series with an analysis of the Power E1050 – which does not support the IBM i operating system but which could any time IBM …

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• IBM Finally Shows Some Growth In Sales And Profits

  August 1, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We got so excited about our coverage of the new Power10 entry and midrange servers in the past few weeks that we didn’t go into Big Blue’s financial results for the second quarter ended in June. Considering the past several years, and all off the bad news on the financial front from bug players like Intel, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, it is probably a good thing that our IBM analysis is coming a week later because we now have a better perspective of how IBM is doing relative to its peers.

  It is a refreshing change to see IBM doing …

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• Altair Delivers More Options for Running SAS Code

  August 1, 2022 Alex Woodie

  Companies that have legacy SAS code for analytic applications running on IBM i servers and other platforms but don’t want to pay the SAS Institute for the runtime have another option from Altair, which recently acquired World Programming.

  SAS was the dominant language for analytics for decades, starting in the 1970s, when Jim Goodnight and his colleagues developed the language at North Carolina State University. Goodnight went on to found the SAS Institute, which provided runtime and support for the open SAS code and, in the process, became the dominant provider of SAS solutions.

  The SAS hegemony has only …

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