• Technology Refreshes, And Maybe Some Hardware Tweaks, Coming This Week

  April 10, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We have heard through the rumor mill for weeks that we should expect Technology Refreshes for the current releases of IBM i sometime this week, and Tuesday being a traditional announcement day for Big Blue, it is reasonable to assume that this will happen on April 11. With history as a guide, it is reasonable to also assume that there will be some kind of tweaks to the Power Systems hardware and to parts of the software stack that IBM has on this machines, including but not limited to, IBM i.

  This being the belly of the Power10 hardware cycle, …

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• Surprise! There’s a Tech Refresh 13 For IBM i 7.3

  December 5, 2022 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Well, we bet you were not expecting that. Or, based on past history, maybe you were. But when IBM put out the two Technology Refresh updates for IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.5 last Friday on December 2 as planned – that would be TR1 for the latter and TR7 for the former – the company also sneaked out an unofficial TR13 update to IBM i 7.3. With this Tech Refresh, IBM i 7.3 has many of the same updates that came to the two more current releases of IBM i.

  If you look at the IBM i Technology …

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• Surprise! It’s IBM i Technology Refresh Time

  September 13, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM surprised the midrange world last week by announcing Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i 7.3 and 7.4, which became generally available on Friday. The fall TRs, which typically are announced in October, brought support for the new Power10-based Power E1080 server in addition to a slew of enhancements to the operating system and surrounding IBM i products.

  The big piece of news with the new TRs – IBM i TR 7.3 TR11 and 7.4 TR5 – is support for servers based on IBM’s speedy new Power10 processor, which is the first Power chip based on its 7 nanometer …

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• What’s New With BRMS, PowerHA, And Db2 Mirror

  April 28, 2021 Alex Woodie

  The latest IBM i Technology Refreshes (TRs) brought a number of enhancements to various parts of the operating system and related licensed products. That includes new stuff for its backup and recovery product, BRMS, as well as the two high availability offerings, PowerHA and Db2 Mirror.

  On the Backup and Recovery Media Services (BRMS) front, IBM added several new features with IBM i 7.4 TR4 and IBM i 7.3 TR10, including new SQL services that returns log information for BRMS activities. This new SQL service generates the same information that the Display Log for BRM (DSPLOGBRM) command does, but it …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 23, Number 16

  April 19, 2021 Doug Bidwell

  This is what we refer to as Download Heaven here at the IBM i PTF Guide. There is a lot of stuff going on this week. So brace yourself. First, there are new cumulative PTF package updates, or Cumes, as well as the new Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 and IBM i 7.4. There is also a new release of Access Client Solutions.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • Technology Refresh 4
  • Latest Cumulative PTF Package C1091740
  • SAP support required PTF list
  • IBM HTTP Server for i
  • IBM i

  …

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• Big Blue Bolsters IBM i High Availability And Data Resiliency

  October 19, 2020 Alex Woodie

  High availability and data resiliency are critical topics in the minds of business owners these days, especially in light of the summer’s disasters, both natural and manmade. To that end, in the latest batch of Technology Refreshes, IBM has bolstered the services that provide high availability and data resilience in IBM i, PowerHA, and BRMS.

  Backup, Recovery, and Media Services (BRMS) is the licensed product that thousands of IBM i shops use to automate their backups and recoveries. Those backups usually involving tape, which was cited by 48 percent of IBM i shops in the 2020 IBM i Marketplace Survey …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 41

  October 14, 2020 Doug Bidwell

  As we have been reporting since October 6, there are new Technology Refreshes that have been launched, and we have come to find out that the Technology Refresh Resaves, which are an important part of the distribution of IBM i code, will be available on November 13.

  Here is the PTF rundown by release:

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Security
  • Performance Tools

  PTF Groups 7.3:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Security
  • Performance Tools

  PTF Groups 7.2:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Security

  PTF Groups 7.1

  • There is occasionally stuff here, thanks to extended support. But not this week, again.

  New (or updated) links …

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• How The Latest TRs Bolster The Core IBM i OS

  October 7, 2020 Alex Woodie

  Yesterday was Technology Refresh (TR) day for IBM and its IBM i operating system, and Big Blue didn’t disappoint. The company unveiled new releases of IBM i 7.4 and 7.3 that bring a slew of new capabilities to the core operating system as well as surrounding offerings like Db2 Mirror, ACS, and RDi. In this article, we’ll look at enhancements to the core OS and related key features.

  During a COMMON webcast Tuesday, IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will touched broadly on a number of enhancements that soon will be available in the TRs. Most of the new capabilities will …

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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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• The Technology Refreshes That Are Not TRs As We Know Them

  May 27, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  All of us have been expecting the Technology Refreshes – that is IBM i 7.3 TR8 and IBM i 7.4 TR2 – to come out on May 15. And when that didn’t happen, a bunch of us started scratching our heads a bit. Thus far, as we go to press, Big Blue has not put out a formal statement to customers about what is going on, but a number of big IBM i customers received a notification from somewhere up the chain of command about the situation, while at the same time, unbeknownst to many, IBM i chief architect Steve …

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