• End Of Support Announced For IBM Power Middleware Releases

  January 15, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last year, Big Blue moved its current and archived announcement letters as well as its sales manuals and other systems such as PRPQ tracking from the ancient IBMLink system (which used to run on its own mainframes for the many decades that we have used it) to a new system called IBM Documentation. The latter of which may perhaps have a better look and feel, but which has a much more difficult way of trying to keep track of what IBM is doing on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis.

  The new IBM Documentation system does not allow you to …

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• 2023: An IBM i Year in Review

  December 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

  With another year nearly in the books, it’s time to take a stroll through the IT Jungle archives and reconsider some of the 728 stories we published in 2023. Here’s a look back at the biggest IBM i news stories of 2023.

  January

  The top concern of IBM i professionals, according to Fortra’s annual IBM i Marketplace Study, was once again security, a position it has held for six straight years. The latest crop of IBM Champions unveiled in January featured about 90 members from the IBM i community, out of a total of 839 for the year. Is …

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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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• Power10 Systems Get Storage And I/O Enhancements

  October 16, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is a spring-fall cadence to the Power Systems platform from IBM, and so when the second batch if Technology Refreshes come around this time of year, we expect to see some hardware updates, too.

  In recent years, we have been hoping – as always – that there would be a Power8+ or Power9+ processor enhancement around halfway through those processor family cycles, because that usually provides a price/performance kicker. But this has not happened during this generation as it did with the Power4+, Power5+, Power6+, and Power7+ generations. And we intend to put the pressure on IBM for a …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 22

  June 5, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome back after the Memorial Day holiday, and our thanks to all who have served and who currently serve.

  There is a slew of security issues that you need to deal with on the IBM i platform. So let’s get to it.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM Java SDK and IBM Java Runtime for IBM i are vulnerable to exposing sensitive information due to flaws and configurations (CVE-2023-30441), which you can find out more about here. The vulnerability can be fixed by applying the latest Java Group PTF.  Releases 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, and 7.2 of IBM i will …

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• Update On Critical Security Vulnerability In PowerVM

  May 24, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Earlier this week, we told you about a very serious security vulnerability in the PowerVM hypervisor when running on Power9 and Power10 systems. IBM found the vulnerability itself and immediately set about to patch the vulnerability, which it revealed on May 17 along with patches to firmware in systems that are managed by the Hardware Management Console, or HMC.

  What was not necessarily apparent was that there are plenty of Power Systems customers who do not have HMCs managing their systems and the logical partitions upon them, and this is particularly true of the IBM i installed base, which …

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• Critical Security Vulnerability In PowerVM Hypervisor

  May 22, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM’s Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) put out a notice on Wednesday, May 17, to inform the Power Systems installed base that there is a very serious security vulnerability in the PowerVM hypervisor. You can see the PSIRT notice at this link and the Security Bulletin: This Power System firmware update is being released to address CVE 2023-30438 at this link. This has a CVSS base score of 9.3, which means it is critical.

  We very rarely see any security vulnerabilities being reported for the PowerVM hypervisor or for the IBM i operating system itself, for that matter, …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 21

  May 22, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  As we report elsewhere in this week’s edition of The Four Hundred, there is a critical security vulnerability in the PowerVM hypervisor when it is running on Power9 and Power10 systems.

  This HIPER/Pervasive patch is described as fixing this: An internally discovered vulnerability in PowerVM on Power9 and Power10 systems could allow an attacker with privileged user access to a logical partition to perform an undetected violation of the isolation between logical partitions which could lead to data leakage or the execution of arbitrary code in other logical partitions on the same physical server.

  The Common Vulnerability and Exposure …

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• OpenShift Can Be The New PASE For IBM i Shops

  May 1, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If you can’t beat ‘em, encapsulate ‘em. That is not the official rallying cry of the IBM i platform, but that certainly has been the philosophy of the Private Address Space Environment that was cooked up by the techies in IBM’s labs in Austin, Texas, home of the RS/6000, and Rochester, Minnesota, home of the AS/400. The marketing people eventually changed its name to the Portable Application Solution Environment, which we know as PASE either way. We have a great PASE, but it is time to make a new one that is more relevant for the time. We are …

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• Tweaks To The Power Software Stack, And Red Hat Gets Easier

  April 12, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Whenever there are Technology Refreshes for the IBM i operating system, its database, and the related systems and development tools for IBM i, you can bet Elon Musk’s last dollar that there will also be nips and tucks, and sometimes more significant changes, to the adjunct software that runs on Power Systems iron. Such as the PowerVM server virtualization hypervisor, the PowerVC implementation of the OpenStack cloud controller, the PowerSC security tools, and other things.

  And indeed, as part of the April 11 announcements, IBM has tweaked this Power Systems stuff. This is not one of the big ones, as …

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