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IBM i 7.1 Tech Refresh Sports Live Partition Mobility
April 30, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
As The Four Hundred told you months ago, IBM was indeed working on a Technology Refresh update for its IBM i operating system for the spring and this update does indeed include live partition mobility, bringing the IBM i platform up to the same level of logical partition live migration that AIX and Linux on Power have had for years. The Tech Refresh also includes a number of other enhancements to the integrated DB2 for i database, a repackaging of the DB2 Web Query tool, and a number of other tweaks and changes.
The Technology Refresh mechanism that Big
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AWS/400: Amazon Builds An AS/400-oid Cloud
April 23, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
OK, there is no such thing as AWS/400, but conceptually speaking, the collection of 30 cloud services are the modern analog to the simplification and integration philosophies built into the AS/400 many years ago, all souped-up for a modern, Webby world. Or, at least that is what I kept thinking as I attended the AWS Summit in New York City last week. AWS is, of course, short for Amazon Web Services, and it is the cloud computing subsidiary of online retailing giant Amazon.
We have two main jobs here in the Four Hundred stack of newsletters. The first, of
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What Happened to My QFileSvr.400 Connection?
April 11, 2012 Hey, Joe
I set up a QFileSvr.400 connection for accessing AS/400 Integrated File Systems (AS/400 IFS) objects on another IBM i machine. I use it several times a month to transfer files. All of a sudden, the connection stopped working and I have no clue why. Do you have any idea what could happened and how I can fix it?
–Bob
As I’ve written before, I love using QFileSvr.400 for accessing, modifying, and copying or moving files between two IBM i systems (Power i, System i, and iSeries). A QFileSvr.400 link is incredibly easy to set up. All you have to do
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Wanted: Power 745 M3 For IBM i SMBs
March 19, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Call it a case of server envy. While I think IBM has the right server design for small and medium businesses that employ its workhorse IBM i operating system and database double whammy, it has unfortunately put the wrong processor in that machine. I am, of course, talking about Intel‘s long-awaited “Sandy Bridge-EP” Xeon E5-2600 processor, which debuted two weeks ago and started shipping in System x machines last Friday.
The Xeon E5-2600 processors, also known by their internal code-name “Jaketown,” are designed for two-socket servers in the same power class as the Power 740 machine in the Power
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Mad Dog 21/21: The Codd Piece
February 13, 2012 Hesh Wiener
IBM used to boast that its mainframes and their DBMS packages manage most of the world’s business and government records. Maybe that’s still true. There are, however, other contenders for that distinction. One is Oracle. And then there’s the little DBMS that holds more data than DB2 and Oracle combined: SQLite. It will be installed in more than a half billion systems this year alone. Like DB2 and Oracle, SQLite is relational fruit of the tree planted by Ted Codd. It’s software as a component. It’s open source. It’s rock solid. And it’s turning computing on its
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Oracle Rejects Damages from SAP, Opts For TomorrowNow Retrial
February 13, 2012 Alex Woodie
Here we go again. Last week, Oracle–still hoppin’ mad that a Federal judge reduced by more than $1 billion the damages awarded from its civil suit against SAP and its now-defunct TomorrowNow subsidiary–formally rejected the $272 million from SAP and requested that a new trial be granted in the case, which began nearly five years ago.
A jury awarded Oracle $1.3 billion in damages in November 2010, a figure that was appealed by SAP. The German software giant had admitted in late 2007 that TomorrowNow had acted inappropriately (it shut down the third-party support unit in 2008), and all
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Charges Dropped, Rational Open Access Goes Free
February 6, 2012 Dan Burger
There’ll be no confetti dropping from the ceiling or champagne corks popping, but IBM‘s announcement that Rational Open Access: RPG Edition becomes available as a free PTF beginning February 14 deserves a little fanfare. Here’s a technology with a lot of promise, the native GUI interface as some call it, that’s finally available without blood, sweat, and tears poured into the ordering process. And, even better, without any licensing charges.
The PTFs are the short-term solution to getting RPG OA into the hands of those who have complained to IBM for that past two years. By May, RPG OA
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RPG Open Access: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
February 6, 2012 Dan Burger
For the past two years RPG Open Access technology has been available, yet it remained unseen and even unheard by a great many people in the IBM i community. A combination of low visibility–partly related to a few ISVs taking the lead on some projects, while onlookers waited to see how the projects turned out–and limited budgets, which put a lot of IT and other expenditures on the skids. Application modernization projects have sprouted here and there, but let’s just say it’s not burning down the house. It’s at a point, however, where we should see a green-screen fade.
Another
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Reader Feedback On IBM’s Move On Up To Power7 Upgrade Math
January 30, 2012 Timothy Prickett Morgan
Hey, TPM:
Best wishes for 2012!
In the table in your story, IBM’s Move On Up To Power7 Upgrade Math, taking into account the last supported release that can could run on that model, can you update this with input from this link from IBM: http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/i/planning/upgrade/osmapping.html
Nobody in their right mind will pay software maintenance for machines that cannot run a release that is supported. For example, the iSeries 170 and 250 machines can run V5R3 at the latest, and there is no point (apart from sympathy for IBM, ha!) to pay software support if the right for
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IBM Off To The Races With New Memory Tech
December 12, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan
The chip heads at IBM‘s Research and Microelectronics divisions have had a busy week, showing off their new memory and computing toys at the IEEE’s International Electron Devices Meeting in Washington, D.C., last week. Some of the chip technology that Big Blue was showing off to its peers is far out into the future, but it could end up in systems sooner than you might think.
As you old AS/400 shops are well aware, IBM used to make its own memory chips and disk drives for its systems and that memory was designed and fabbed in the same Rochester,