The Top Ten IBM i Requests From The IBM Ideas Portal
April 2, 2025 Alex Woodie
Big Blue is gearing up for a major new release of the IBM i operating system. We don’t know yet what will be in the release, but we can forge some guesses by checking out what new features the IBM i community is requesting through the IBM Ideas portal, and how IBM reacts to them.
IBM prides itself on being a customer-focused organization, and so it looks to the IBM i community for direction on what sort of features, capabilities, and fixes the IBM i community currently is looking for. That community outreach takes various forms, including the COMMON Americas Advisory Council (CAAC), COMMON Europe Advisory Council (CEAC), the Large User Group (LUG), and IBM’s ISV Advisory Council.
The fifth outreach program – and arguably its most democratic – is the IBM Ideas portal. The portal, which replaced the Request for Enhancement (RFE) program back in 2022, enables IBM i customers to submit new feature requests to IBM, which can either agree to deliver the functionality or decline to do so.
One feature that great about the IBM Ideas portal, which can be accessed at ideas.ibm.com/, is that other members of the IBM i community can also vote on submitted ideas. This feedback mechanism shows IBM which ideas are reasoning with the IBM i community, and conversely, which ones aren’t.
Figure 1. How IBM classifies IBM i requests via the IBM Ideas Portal.
The IBM Ideas portal has exploded in recent years, and as of last week, more than 4,330 IBM i ideas have been submitted through the portal. Out of this total, IBM has delivered IBM i updates based on the submitted idea 1,255 times, marked 1,770 of them “not under consideration,” and marked 955 of them as “future consideration.” You can see the breakdown of the remainder in Figure 1.
So, what are IBM i customers asking for, and what’s resonating with the installed base? Here are the top 10 most recent ideas (i.e. the last five years) according to vote counts, and for which IBM has yet to deliver or reject (i.e. the request is currently in “future consideration,” “under review,” “submitted,” or “planned for a future release” status).
- “Machine pool minimum size setting for path switch.” Submitted September 2024, 246 votes. Future consideration.
This IBM i customer suffered from dropped 5250 sessions when his or her SAN array automatically rerouted traffic to a new path or port, or “switched paths,” due to an outage. The sessions were dropped because the machine pool, or collection of physical storage devices, was too small. The customer recommended either having the system not consume as much memory during the path switch, or maintaining a minimum amount of storage. The CEAC recommended that IBM set this as a high priority idea.
- “Link Aggregation NIC adapter replacement without service interruption.” Submitted March 2025, 110 votes. Future consideration.
This IBM i customer experienced a service outage when replacing a network interface card (NIC) as part of Ethernet Link Aggregation configuration, or combining multiple physical Ethernet links into a single logical link. The outage is due to the need to temporarily disable the line description on IBM i, which deactivates the IP address and makes service outage “unavoidable,” the customer wrote. While the Power hardware supports active NIC maintenance, the software apparently does not. Steve Bradshaw, a CEAC member, said he would bring it up with the group.
- “Extend RPG compiler messages to support modern RPG naming.” Submitted July 2021, 73 votes. Future consideration.
This IBM i customer is frustrated by how long field names are handled in RPG. While the compiler supports long field names, the event handler does not, leading to a mismatch. Both the CAAC and the CEAC reviewed the request and recommended that IBM view it as a high priority back in 2021. However, in 2022, IBM said it would take the request as input for planning, but made no commitment to implement it.
- “Include AFP Manager in New Navigator for i.” Submitted January 2022, 67 votes. Future consideration.
This IBM i customer wants IBM to add to the new Navigator for IBM i a facility to import AFP objects, such as code pages, coded fonts, font character sets, and form and page definitions. The heritage Navigator had these in a facility called AFP Manager, but IBM has not replicated this AFP functionality into the upgraded Navigator product, to the chagrin of some customers. The CEAC recommended that IBM consider it a medium priority requirement, while CAAC recommended that IBM not implement the request because there are other offerings besides AFP manager that could be used. IBM said it understands the requirement and may deliver it in the future.
- “CGI PDI Enable History Performance Reports PDF.” Submitted December 2020. 55 votes. Future consideration.
This IBM i customer is “upset” by the lack of a PM400-like capability in Performance Data Investigator (PDI). IBM has ended support for PM400, and is moving to PDI as the strategic performance analysis tool within IBM i Navigator. While the customer thinks PDI is superior in most ways, the one area that it’s inferior is that PDI doesn’t support the capability to create customized PDFs of performance data. “It’s the one most important issue to them that they no longer can get.” Both the CAAC and the CEAC recommended that IBM treat it as a medium priority. IBM responded in 2021: “This is not a simple request, and thus will not be delivered this year. The Performance Tools team considers this an important function and we will be working on it for a future delivery.”
- “Removal of 4-Core Limit for IBM-i VMs on the S1022.” Submitted October 2024. 52 votes. Under review.
This customer proposes eliminating the current four-core limit imposed on IBM i virtual machines running on the S1022 server, which is a favorite among private cloud providers. “This enhancement would better align the S1022 capabilities with modern enterprise needs and maximize the utilization of available hardware resources,” the customer wrote. Other users approved, saying it would eliminate the need for customers to move to the larger Power E1080 if they have LPARs with more than four cores. The CAAC reviewed the idea and recommended that IBM not implement it. “The idea of the S1022 is to provide a cost-efficient server,” the CAAC program manager said. It is currently under review.
- “Allow more than one level of qualified data structures in SQLRPGLE.” Submitted August 2020. 49 votes. Future consideration.
The IBM i customer is embedding ever-larger amounts of SQL into RPGLE sources, “but the compiler still only supports one level of qualified data structures,” the customer writes. “This is such a pain.” Adding multiple levels of qualified data structures would be particularly helpful during joins, where external file descriptions in a data structure are passed to the SQL statement. The CAAC reviewed the request and recommended that IBM view it as a high priority. IBM says it will use the request as input to planning but did not commit to delivering it.
- “Improve the Reconnect process for RDi.” Submitted March 2022. 48 votes. Future consideration.
The IBM i customer is frustrated at how RDi behaves when his or her connection is dropped while remoting into the server via a VPN. When the connection goes down, RDi shows that it’s still connected, even if common tasks fail, such as opening a source member or trying to save a previously opened source member. Only when the user tries to open a folder or a file in the IFS does he or she get a dialog box asking if he or she would like to reconnect. The enhancement would be to have RDi handle dropped connections more seamlessly. “Perhaps also have a button to reconnect.” CAAC recommended it be viewed as a high priority. The RDi team responded: “Although the theme of this request is consistent with our business strategy, it is not committed to the release that is currently under development.” That was three years ago, but it’s still under consideration.
- “ClamAV rpm requested for IBM i.” Submitted May 2021. 47 votes. Planned for future release.
The IBM i customer requested to have ClamAV, an open source antivirus package that’s already available on AIX, available on IBM i 7.1 and higher. “There are only two commercial AV platforms for the IBM i and they are way overpriced,” the customer wrote. “Like absurdly overpriced. Like paying Porsche 911 money for a worn out bicycle. If we at least had something out there like ClamAV this could be a way to get others on board.” CEAC and CAAC both reviewed the item and recommended IBM view it as a medium priority (except for supporting IBM i 7.1, which is no longer supported). IBM has not yet delivered on this request, but states that it’s planned for a future release.
- “Urgent support for Power HA System Mirror for IBM i of the new IBM Spectrum Virtualize function policy-based HA (the new Hyperswap function).” Submitted June 2024. 46 votes. Submitted.
This IBM i customer is asking for PowerHA to support policy-based high availability (PB-HA), which is the name of the functionality that will replace Hyperswap in IBM Spectrum Virtualize, the software for supporting IBM FlashSystem SANs. Unfortunately, there are architectural differences that pose difficulties. “From a technical point of view the old Hyperswap presents itself to the IBM i hosts as a single cluster with a PowerHA LUN switching configuration. The new PB-HA is based on a concept of Logical HA partitions and it presents itself to the IBM i hosts as a dual node cluster. PowerHA LUN switching is not able to support this configuration.” Both CAAC and CEAC recommended that IBM treat it as a high priority item.
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