• IBM i 7.3 And 7.4 Get Their Autumn Tech Refreshes

  October 9, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue is hosting its IBM Systems Technical University this week, and used the occasion to quietly launch the Technology Refreshes, or TRs as they are known, for IBM i releases 7.3 and 7.4. If you were running around the Venetian Hotel, you could probably stitch together the extent of the updates to the platform, and to be honest, we are still trying to get all of the details, which were not available as we went to press.

  We will tell you what we know now, and then circle back and drill down into the details as appropriate.

  First of …

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• You’ve Still Got Friends In High Places

  September 23, 2019 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  For the past 25 years, and across a total of 78 meetings over that time, the Large User Group, or LUG as it is known, has been helping Big Blue keep the AS/400 and IBM i platform on the right track for the very large enterprises that have the system as their platform for running the mission critical applications that are at the heart of the business. The LUG has put forward thousands of requirements to IBM – both things that the organization wants IBM to do and other things that it wants IBM to stop doing – and …

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• IBM Bolsters ACS with Database and Administrative Goodies

  May 15, 2019 Alex Woodie

  Amid the many enhancements that IBM has delivered with IBM i 7.4 and IBM i 7.3 TR6 is a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS), which has become the go-to client interface that many IBM i professionals use to access the system for a variety of tasks. Database engineers and system administrators are the big winners with this release.

  There’s no denying that IBM delivered a whopper of release with IBM i 7.4 and its sidekick, IBM i 7.3 TR6. There’s been so much news – starting with the availability and security enhancements in Db2 Mirror and Authority Collection …

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• IBM i DevOps Gets Simpler On Skytap Cloud

  February 25, 2019 Alex Woodie

  IBM i professionals who yearn for the administrative simplicity of Amazon Web Services will soon be rewarded when Skytap’s IBM i cloud becomes generally available next quarter. Among the IBM partners Skytap is tapping for the roll-out is Rocket Software, which is integrating the Aldon suite of lifecycle management tools to simplify DevOps in a potentially ground-breaking new way.

  Rocket Software is in the process of certifying its Aldon Lifecyle Manager for IBM i (LMi) software to run on Skytap‘s public cloud offering for IBM i. Late last year, Skytap, which has Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as a major investor …

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• IBM Delivers New Goodies with ACS Update

  December 5, 2018 Alex Woodie

  IBM has issued a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS), the indispensable Java-based client that delivers a range of functionality to administrators, developers, and users alike. In the new release of ACS, IBM delivers enhancements across a range of functions, including SQL queries, database schemas, data transfer, and printing and emulation.

  IBM first unveiled ACS way back in August 2012 as the strategic replacement for older IBM i client interfaces, such as Access for Windows, Access for Web, and Access for Linux. With a full 5250 emulator, support for printing, the capability to view IFS, spool file, and message …

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• Riding The Upgrade Cycle

  October 8, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In an ideal world, all servers would always be new and all operating systems and applications would be patched and running in optimal form. But we don’t live in that world. And that means for many customers that don’t have bales of money sitting around, sometimes the IBM i platform starts to get a little long in the tooth.

  That is certainly the case for parts of the IBM i installed base. There are still a lot of Power5 and Power5+ customers out there who have resisted the temptation to upgrade their systems for the past five or six generations, …

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• Spring Cleaning In IBM i Land

  May 7, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  It has been a busy couple of weeks with IBM winding down a whole bunch of different products related to the IBM i platform. It is a kind of spring cleaning, we suppose. IBM doesn’t usually offer explanations for its decision to discontinue products, so we just have to take them at face value. Sometimes there are upgraded or replacement products, and sometimes it is just the end of the line.

  In announcement letter 918-056, IBM says that it will be withdrawing the 7042-CR9 Hardware Management Console (HMC), and moreover, IBM says that going forward, support for the Model …

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• IBM i Vulns Spotted in Node, BIND and HTTP Server

  September 6, 2017 Alex Woodie

  IBM last month moved to patch several critical security vulnerabilities related to the BIND service in IBM i that could allow attackers unauthorized access to IBM i servers running any release of the OS from IBM 6.1 to 7.3. Security glitches were also patched for the IBM i implementation of Node.js, the HTTP Server bundled with IBM i, the hardware management console (HMC), and WebSphere.

  Both ISC BIND vulnerabilities work in a similar way and enabled similar paths into affected systems – namely by allowing an attacker to craft a specially crafted request packet to bypass authentication and therefore gain …

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• IBM Moves HMC Management To Native Power Server, LPARs

  August 14, 2017 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Out of band management is not a new thing in the IT sector, and many of the best and most sophisticated pieces of software in the world have a distinct management console of some sort that gathers up the state of a machine or collection of machines and uses it to initially configure those devices and to coerce them to behave themselves despite their nature for electronic mischief.

  The Hardware Management Console, or HMC, has been around for so long in the AS/400, iSeries, System i, and IBM i line for so long we can’t remember when people were not …

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