Virtual I/O Server Archives

Big Blue Unveils Spring 2021 IBM i Technology Refreshes

April 12, 2021 Alex Woodie

IBM tomorrow will announce the latest round of Technology Refreshes (TRs) for the current versions of the operating systems. With IBM i 7.4 TR4 and 7.3 TR10, IBM is focusing its efforts on extending automation across various components of the operating system, including the database, security, and high availability. But a surprise also awaits IBM i enthusiasts who are visually inclined.

IBM gave IT Jungle a preview of the announcements that will go public tomorrow, and (very kindly) gave us permission to cover them in today’s issue of The Four Hundred. That means that the announcement materials will not …
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OpenShift Provides One Path To IBM i Modernization

March 29, 2021 Alex Woodie

The crown jewel in IBM’s $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat arguably is OpenShift, which is a Kubernetes-based container management system for running “cloud-native” applications. While it’s unlikely OpenShift will ever integrate directly with IBM i and its applications, IBM has high hopes the software will help usher in a new wave of application modernization and innovation among IBM i customers.

IBM Power engineer Joe Cropper laid out the case for IBM i shops to get going with OpenShift two weeks ago during the IBM i Futures conference, which was hosted by COMMON. Cropper, you will remember, made a …
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Security Vulnerability In VIOS, AIX, And Maybe IBM i

November 23, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM i shops that use the Virtual I/O Server, which is a cut-down version of the AIX implementation of Unix created by Big Blue, have to be aware that there is a security vulnerability that affects recent releases of AIX and VIOS.

The vulnerability, announced in Security Vulnerability CVE-2020-4788, affects Power9 machinery running VIOS 3.1 or AIX 7.1 and AIX 7.2, and under what are called “extenuating circumstances” the vulnerability could allow a local user on the system to obtain sensitive information stored on the L1 cache on the Power9 cores.

The vulnerability was reported on November 18, and …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 47

November 23, 2020 Doug Bidwell

As we report elsewhere in this issue of The Four Hundred, there is a new security bulletin that has been issued relating to a speculative execution vulnerability that affects Power9 systems running the Virtual I/O Server in general and AIX 7.1 and AIX 7.2 in particular. As such, it indirectly affects all four IBM i releases, from 7.1 through 7.4. See Security Bulletin: Vulnerability CVE-2020-4788 at this link.

The patches to deal with this vulnerability are as follows:
- IBM i 7.4: MF68089 and MF68090
- IBM i 7.3: MF68094 and MF68095
- IBM i 7.2: MF68096 and MF68097
- IBM i
…
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Big Blue Revives IBM i 7.1 With Power9 Support

November 16, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

We don’t get surprises very often in the Power Systems market, and even fewer in the IBM i sub-market. But last week, we did get a surprise – and it was a pleasant one – as Big Blue decided that it was going to allow for IBM i 7.1, which has long since been removed from marketing and which was just recently given extended extended support through April 2023, to run on selected models of the Power Systems line using Power9 processors.

That IBM would allow for this is remarkable, and it shows the economic and technical difficulties that many …
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How Much Does NVM-Express Flash Really Boost IBM i Performance?

November 9, 2020 Timothy Prickett Morgan

With the NVM-Express protocol, a storage overlay for the PCI-Express peripheral bus that allows flash to be addressed in a parallel fashion as flash in its own right and not as emulated disk storage using a SATA or SCSI protocol, the idea is to get those vintage storage drivers out of the way and let the operating system kernel speak directly to the flash. This is done so the impressive – and seemingly always growing – I/O bandwidth of flash can actually be brought to bear to speed up applications.

Flash in general, and NVM-Express flash in particular, has been …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 27

July 14, 2020 Doug Bidwell

Welcome to the second half of 2020 after a brief holiday hiatus from The Four Hundred and therefore the IBM i PTF Guide.

There is another new HIPER for the Virtual I/O Server, or VIOS, which again we know all of you IBM i shops love dearly. The HIPER is IJ25390, and it is for slow TCP performance with the Virtual Ethernet adapter and large send. Here is some more on that LSO – short for large send offload – and specifically a link that explains it better than we did two weeks ago, plus another link to a …
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IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 22, Number 26

July 6, 2020 Doug Bidwell

Well, we made it through half of 2020, and that is something of a miracle. Let’s hope the second half is not so dramatic. The odds are not favoring that at the moment, but hope springs eternal and that is how we have made it through the past 15,000 years of pre-history to today, if you think about it. It’s helpful to take the long view at critical times.

As far as PTFs go, there is a new HIPER for the Virtual I/O Server, or VIOS, which we know all you IBM i shops love. The HIPER is IJ25390, and …
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How Big Blue Stacks Up IBM i On Premises And On Cloud

June 24, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Here’s the $64,000 question: How much more does a slice of the IBM Cloud running IBM i cost compared to buying an on-premises machine with the same rough amount of capacity and installing IBM i on it and putting it into production? The answer to that question is: That all depends. But in general, as is the case with all infrastructures available on premises and on the cloud, the cloud is always more expensive.

This is not a surprise if you think about it for a moment. By using cloudy infrastructure, you are offloading the hassle of maintaining hardware and …
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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 …
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