• IBM Switches To Build To Order For Entry Power Systems

  February 24, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  If we trust our memory, for the past several decades both high-end Power systems machines as well as all System z mainframes have been done on a build-to-order basis, and for the past decade at least, these big iron boxes were made at IBM’s factories in Poughkeepsie, New York, for the worldwide market.

  For many years, entry and midrange AS/400 line was manufactured in three plants: the main factory in Rochester, Minnesota for the market in Canada and the United States and for certain high end machines in Europe, as well as Santa Palombo outside of Milan, Italy for entry …

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• Coming To You Live In A Datacenter Very Near You, Or One Far Away, Too

  February 24, 2025 Ash Giddings

  We are at a pivotal moment in IBM i history regarding migration options. Public cloud solutions like IBM Power Virtual Server and Skytap on Azure have matured to the point where they are now viable for production workloads, shedding the novelty value that surrounded them during the era which coincided with the launch of IBM’s Power9 machines, to a lesser extent, Power10 iron.

  Additionally, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) worldwide are well equipped with Power10 hardware and the expertise to support both migrations and ongoing operations. Furthermore, on-premise Power10 delivers impressive price-to-performance benefits, with Power11 poised to raise the bar even …

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• TL Ashford Preps For Looming 2D Barcode Mandate

  February 24, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The humble barcode traces its roots to 1974, when a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum was scanned into a System/370 mainframe at a market in Marsh, Ohio. Fast forward 51 years, and the retail industry is on the cusp of requiring a new generation of two-dimensional barcodes. TL Ashford is preparing to help IBM i shops comply with industry mandates around 2D barcodes, as well as to find creative ways to exploit the vast new data they contain.

  The original Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode is composed of 30 vertical lines of varying width, which is sufficient for storing …

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• MDNA Speeds Up Git Transactions In Big IBM i Environments

  February 24, 2025 Alex Woodie

  With the latest release of its change management software for IBM i, Midrange Dynamics North America (MDNA) has addressed a thorny issue impacting the use of Git in large IBM i environments. The company also enhanced how it handles custom IBM i definitions in Git environments.

  The use of Git to manage source code has nearly doubled in the IBM i community over the past five years, according to Fortra’s IBM i Marketplace Study, growing to 30 percent in the most recent survey. That indicates a strong push to adopt DevOps technologies and techniques, which is a good thing …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 8

  February 24, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  Two big security vulnerabilities greet you as you start your week. First, we have Security Bulletin: This Power System update is being released to address CVE-2023-52881, which you can find out more about here. We don’t see issues with baseboard management controllers very often, so pay attention to this one.

  The affected releases are:

  Affected Product(s)               Version(s)

  OPENBMC                             FW1060.00 – FW1060.20

  OPENBMC                             OP940.00 – OP940.70

  HMC                                        OP940.00 – OP940.72

  OPENBMC                             OP910.00 – OP910.90

  Second, we have Security Bulletin: IBM i is vulnerable to a user gaining elevated privileges due to an unqualified library call [CVE-2024-55898]. You can find out …

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• ACS Password Leaks Are A Security Issue On IBM i

  February 17, 2025 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are relying on the old WINLOGON process with their Access Client Solutions (ACS) installations will need to find a new way to synchronize passwords between Windows clients and IBM i servers. According to a new report from Silent Signal, the passwords could still be compromised.

  In early January, Big Blue published an IBM Support document about problems that IBM i shops were having after they applied the Windows 11 24H2 update, which Microsoft had started rolling out in October 2024. IBM i customers who used the ACS Windows Application Package told IBM they were no longer …

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• State Of The Power Systems Base 2025: The Systems

  February 17, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In last week’s issue, we talked about the upgrade cycle for the IBM i operating systems over more than a decade based on the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey done by Fortra and pretty heavily massaged by us to reflect what we think is closer to reality for the IBM i market at large.

  No matter if you look at the raw data from the survey or the more elaborate model we have built derived from the past eleven surveys, one thing is clear: There is a regular pattern for Power Systems upgrades among OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i shops …

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• Guru: AI Pair Programming In RPG With GitHub Copilot

  February 17, 2025 Gregory Simmons

  If you have been meaning to give VS Code a try, but just haven’t had a chance, I encourage you to avail yourself today. Yes, for you RDi users, it will take a little bit to migrate your favorite settings, code snippets, and compile commands – but I promise, you won’t regret the move.

  In my article, Getting Started With The Code 4 i Extension Within VS Code, I offer a few more insights to help get you started. And if you are an SEU user, yes, the switch may seem daunting, but one of the great things about …

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• IBM Announcements: Service Price Hikes, HANA Iron As A Service, Rust for AIX And Maybe PASE, And More. . .

  February 17, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When Big Blue makes big announcements, we break them down and analyze them uniquely. But there are often a lot of little things that happen over the course of a few weeks, and we like to lump these together and give you the rundown. That way you are informed, but you can skim it.

  So let’s take a look the things related to Power Systems and IBM i that have happened in the past few weeks since we last did this. Let’s start with a few price changes.

  In announcement letter AD25-0140, dated February 3 and effective on March …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 7

  February 17, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  How secure you feeling today? Well, IBM i is generally pretty rock solid, but you have to stay on top of the security vulnerabilities. And there are two of them that are new this week.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM Java SDK and IBM Java Runtime for IBM i are vulnerable to a partial denial of service and a JNI function returning incorrect value length due to multiple vulnerabilities. You can find out more about this issue at this link, and here are the patches for it:

  IBM i Release                         PTF Group

  7.5                                             SF99955 Level 13

  7.4                                             SF99665 …

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