The New Capabilities IBM Added To Navigator For i
April 23, 2025 Alex Woodie
The addition of multi-factor authentication (MFA) to IBM i 7.6 is the big news with the recent operating system update from IBM. But IBM has introduced new capabilities to other parts of the platform as well, and some of the biggest reside in Navigator for i.
As the strategic Web-based console for administrating the IBM i server, it’s natural that Navigator for i gets lots of attention. Whether you’re looking to monitor or manage the databases, inspect batch jobs, configure security, or monitor performance, Navigator for i is the one central place that lets you do it. You can, of course, continue using CL commands or APIs, but the visual, drag-and-drop nature of Navigator makes using it a no-brainer for most IBM i professionals.
As it has with every Technology Refresh (TR) since it launched New Nav back in the fall of 2021, IBM has added new goodies to Navigator with the recent launches of IBM i 7.6 and 7.5 TR6.
License Management And Firmware Levels
One of the most useful enhancements to Navigator with IBM i 7.6 and 7.5 TR6 is the addition of information related to license management. With these releases, IBM is including a dashboard that shows the status of IBM i operating system license keys, including icons with alert levels that correspond to “warning,” “critical,” and “expired.”
Considering that IBM is moving to subscription-based licensing for IBM i as opposed to perpetual licenses, it’s important for administrators to know how long before their IBM i licenses expire. The table that IBM provides with 7.6 and 7.5 TR6 (which is powered by underlying SQL services that are also new) allow admins to sort their licenses by expiration date.
One IBM i professional who is enthusiastic about the new expiring license dashboard in New Nav is Steve Bradshaw, the managing director of Rowton IT Solutions in the United Kingdom and an IBM Champion.
“Subscription licensing is here with many of us, and to know when your license keys are going to expire is absolutely vital,” Bradshaw said during the recent “Three Steves” webinar on IBM i 7.6. “And guess where the place is that’s the best place to be highlighted when you’ve got keys that are going to expire? It’s in the Navigator! The panes even change color as you get close to it!”
IBM has also added bolstered its system status page with a new firmware card that quickly shows the exact firmware level for each managed LPAR.
TLS Warnings And Wizard
IBM i shops still have the freedom of connecting their system to the network in a non-secure manner–for now. But with IBM i 7.6, administrators are going to start hearing warnings within Navigator about those non-secure network connections. And eventually, the IBM i operating system may stop allowing those non-secure network connections to exit at all, according to Steve Will, the IBM i chief technology officer and chief architect.
“When you start using 7.6, Navigator is going to start warning you about non-secure connections, non-TLS enabled connections, because eventually, you’re not going to want to be using those things anymore,” Will said during the “Three Steves” webinar. “Navigator is going to start showing you that you are kind of in danger here.”
Will, who is also an IBM Distinguished Engineer, pleaded with IBM i users to start paying attention to those warnings, because IBM is strongly considering not allowing network connections that aren’t protected by TLS encryption by the end of the year.
“We may at some point be required to disable that sort of thing in certain environments, because the weak encryption stuff is a very dangerous situation, particularly if you’re dealing…over connections with data that is critical to our banking industry or healthcare industry or whatever,” Will added. “And so there may be in environments where we have to deal with that.”
The good news for security-conscious administrators is that Navigator makes it easy to not only understand exactly which connections aren’t securely configured with TLS, but it makes it easy to enable TLS. Bradshaw said these functions were some of his favorite little “gems” in Navigator.
“One gem for me that’s a 7.6 thing is there’s a single place you can now look in the Navigator that tells you what connections you have that are configured securely or insecurely,” Bradshaw said. “This is wonderful for auditors, a simple screenshot. It’s also very easy for to explain to IT managers or people responsible for budget, look, there’s the hole. It’s amazing how they take a picture more seriously than text, but that’s a real win.
“There’s also a wizard in there that allows you to then go and configure the things that are not correctly configured in an easy-to-understand way that gives you the confidence it’s going to succeed,” Bradshaw continued. “So that’s a big plus.
“And then finally, the bit that sits underneath that–there is now a special host server, one of these communication functions, that you can say, once it’s done, secure, then I want you to lock it down so people can’t undo that, and so it stays secure,” he said.
Content Manager OnDemand
The new Navigator release also brings new Content Manager OnDemand (CMOD) for i capabilities.
Specifically, administrators will see a new CMOD output queue, and a directory monitor jobs page that shows monitor status. IBM says that it has added new fields for instances, including snippets of the ARS.CFG and ARS.INI configuration files, among other capabilities. These enhancements are available through PTFs for CMOD for i versions 7.4 and 7.5, IBM says.
Performance Data Investigator
Performance Data Investigator (PDI) sits within Navigator and has been enhanced with several new minor capabilities. For starters, users can now view incomplete collections; previously, users could not view a collection if it was marked “incomplete.”
IBM is also shipping new graph history charts that show the CPU utilization per number of batch jobs and CPU utilization per number of interactive jobs.
Multi-Factor Authentication
Navigator also plans a role in multi-factor authentication (MFA), but only for IBM i. Navigator will be instrumental in enrolling users in the new MFA facility, and includes a new user interface for users to configure time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) support with their authenticator app.
These are the top features in Navigator, but not all of them. To read all of the new features that IBM is delivering with the first PTF for 2025, check out the IBM Support webpage for Navigator here.
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