• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 43

  October 23, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Busy, busy, busy. That is what the good people at IBM Rochester have been in the past week, with a slew of PTFs for the currently supported releases – that is IBM i 7.5 and IBM i 7.4 that are on standard support and IBM i 7.3 that just went into extended support at the end of September, a trio of security vulnerabilities in the IBM i stack, and two group PTFs for the IBM i 7.2 release that is supposed to be kaput.

  Let’s start with the security vulnerabilities.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM i is vulnerable to …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 41

  October 9, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Here is something interesting. There is a new cume for IBM i 7.3, just after it goes out of standard support and is now on extended support. For years, we have been after IBM to put a cume out when it stops supporting a release, kind of a summation at end of life. This is the first time Big Blue has managed to do that.

  It is likely a coincidence, but it should have always been policy. It is difficult to round up docs and PTFs for an end of life product two years after the fact. Having a stake …

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• Power10 Upgrade Considerations You Need to be Aware Of

  October 4, 2023 Steve Pitcher

  It has been over a year since Power10 servers have been available from IBM. After many conversations, configurations, proposals, installations, and project debriefs, I wanted to use this article as a point of reflection on some of the nuances around Power10 and the End of Service dates for IBM i 7.3 and Power8 hardware.

  Let’s just jump right into it because we are all busy.

  First: A hardware change is most often used to facilitate the upgrade path to a newer version of the IBM i operating system.

  The Power8 servers top out at supporting IBM i 7.4. They’re …

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• Facing The Challenges Of Upgrading Old Systems With The Cloud

  September 18, 2023 Jason Hardy

  If you are one of the many IBM i shops that has always created its own applications and that has a long history of investing in the AS/400, iSeries, System i, and IBM i platforms over the past three and a half decades at reasonably regular intervals to keep the hardware and the systems software current, you have it relatively easy and we definitely want to talk to you about your move to the cloud and how we might help.

  But if you are one of the many OS/400 and IBM i shops that have, for myriad reasons, gotten stuck …

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• Low-End IBM i P05 And P10 Tiers Go Subscription-Only Pricing First

  September 11, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  We were away for our annual summer hiatus relating to the Labor Day holiday in America when Big Blue decided, as we anticipated in mid-August, that it would begin the shift to all-subscription pricing for the IBM i operating system, the integrated Db2 for i relational database, and the related IBM i Licensed Program Products (LPPs) that have been commonly used by Power Systems customers all through the OS/400, i5/OS, and IBM i generations.

  Back in February, subscription pricing for the IBM i operating system and its integrated Db2 for i relational database was made available under subscription …

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• Say Sayonara To The IBM i Integrated Server

  August 21, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  One of the neat things about the AS/400 platform and its progeny is that it takes integration seriously, even to the extent of wrapping the OS/400 and IBM i platform around competitive platforms to bring them into the fold. The File Serving I/O Processor (FSIOP), which became the Integrated Netfinity Server, which became the Integrated xSeries Server, which became the IBM i Integrated Server is a good example of this.

  This integrated server approach brought a real, discrete, physical X86 server running Windows Server, OS/2, Novell NetWare, or SCO Unix under the skins of the AS/400 and IBM i Server. …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 16

  April 17, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  In a rare occurrence, there are no updates to the PTF Groups for the currently supported releases – IBM i 7.5, IBM i 7.4, and IBM i 7.3 – but there sure are a whole bunch of security vulnerabilities that IBM i shops have to deal with.

  First, there are two of them dealing with WebSphere Application Server Liberty. In PH50863:IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty is vulnerable to a denial of service, which you can find out more about here and which deals with CVE-2023-24998 CVSS 7.5. Then there is PH52739:IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty is vulnerable to a privilege …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 15

  April 10, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  It is Spring Break in a lot of places, and also Easter and Passover as we go to press, and so it is not at all surprising that there is not a lot of activity in the IBM i PTF Guide this week. We took the opportunity to retire 7.2 worksheet, check the archives, and, DLB_PTF_04/01/23_B25N14.XLS for the last worksheet. Any changes to V7R2 going forward will be detailed here instead of the Guide.

  There are High Impact/Pervasive tweaks for all currently supported releases – IBM i 7.5, IBM i 7.4, and IBM i 7.3 – and a fix list …

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• The Power Systems Base Is A Little Less Rusty

  February 27, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Another three years, and another upgrade cycle that can bring about the modernizing of the Power Systems iron that supports the IBM i customer base. Or, more precisely, another four distinct upgrade cycles that customers are on as they move off legacy iron to something more current than what they have.

  What we mean by this is that some customers are stuck on older releases because they are cheapskates by necessity or they have applications that can only run on older releases like OS/400 V5R3, i5/OS 5.4, or IBM i 6.1. Others are stuck on IBM i 7.1. Or IBM …

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• IBM i Subscription Pricing Comes To All Power9 And Power10 Iron

  February 20, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Big Blue has been gradually “cloudifying” the packaging and pricing of its Power Systems hardware and IBM i software stack as an alternative to buying hardware outright and acquiring perpetual licenses to the operating system and pay Software Maintenance. Subscription-based pricing came to hardware and software for the Power10-based Power S1014 server running IBM i 7.5 last year, and now IBM i subscription pricing is more widely available.

  As outlined in announcement letter 223-030 on Valentine’s Day last week, IBM i subscription pricing is now available on all Power9 and Power10 servers, top to bottom, and on the four current …

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