Planet i

GSLMUG › February meeting announcment – BIG DATA

M. Manning — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:23:58 +0000

Dean Compher, an IT specialist with IBM whose focus is Data Management, will be our February speaker on the subject of BIG DATA. Hoping to see all of you there.

Read the original at GSLMUG.

Hertvik Business Services - Joe's Blog › From the Admin Alert archives: Two articles on semi-restricted state

Joe Hertvik — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:04:42 +0000

I’ve been writing an IBM i-based column (AS/400) on System i, iSeries, and Power i system administration for Timothy Prickett-Morgan at IT Jungle since 2002 (thanks, TPM).

Tim keeps all of these articles on archive at his site on the Admin Alert Web page. Check it out sometime if you’re looking to do something with administering an IBM i machine (#IBMi).

This week, I’m featuring two articles I wrote for IT Jungle’s Admin Alert column on IBM i semi-restricted state. This is a term I used when a client asked me how to put his iSeries partition in a special form of i/OS restricted state, where the system is restricted but administrators can still use their Ethernet lines and TCP/IP to download fixes and do maintenance.

Semi-restricted state cuts your system off from its usual system processing while allowing you to still reach your partition remotely through TCP/IP. I wrote the following two pieces on semi-restricted state.

Putting Your System in Semi-Restriced State – The original article that described the process
More Information on Semi-Restricted State, Vendor Profiles, and Storage Pools, where I published some reader expansions on my original idea.

I hope these links help in administering your IBM i shop.

Read the original at Hertvik Business Services - Joe's Blog.

GSLMUG › January 11, 2012 – Robin Van Wagenen

danbcheney — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:09:58 +0000

Robin, if you haven’t heard, recently retired from IBM as a POWER Systems/Storage Specialist with nearly 33 years of service. We will miss her as our IBM representative. Robin shared with us some of her history, background, experiences, insights, highlights, lowlights, and much more that has been packed into those many years with IBM. Enjoy this video of her presentation.

Read the original at GSLMUG.

Hertvik Business Services - Joe's Blog › Extol White Paper Series on Design-Time Automation for Business Integration Availble

Joe Hertvik — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:41:47 +0000

Extol is offering two white papers on Design Time Automation for Business Integration on its Whitepaper Library Web site. (Registration required)

Extol’s white papers cover the challenge of cutting the cost of business integration activities, which can be one of the biggest expenses in an IT department. These papers cover the following issues:

The need for Design Time Automation in Business Integration
Seven Design-Time Automation Examples

Please let me know if you see any other Power i/System i White Papers for downloading. I’ll be glad to link to these white papers on this site.

Also, if you’re looking for professionally written white papers, case studies, brochures, email campaigns, and other downloadable marketing material, please email me at Hertvik Business Services. We’d love to help you market your product.

Read the original at Hertvik Business Services - Joe's Blog.

Steve Pitcher › Pitcher’s Lotus-on-IBM-i Campaign Pays Dividends

Steven C. Pitcher — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:29:00 +0000

Here's an article IT Jungle ran on getting IBM Connections, IBM Sametime Media Manager and Lotus Notes Traveler on IBM i. It ran a few weeks ago but I never had a chance to blog a link to it.

http://www.itjungle.com/fhs/fhs012412-story01.html

I will say that IT Jungle were interested enough in what we're doing to seek me out for an interview, and not the other way around. Kudos to them. That also tells me this is getting a little bigger.

Read the original at Steve Pitcher.

ile rpg programming: tips and techniques › Dynamic FTP scripts

Ken — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:46:00 +0000

How to update ftp source scripts from a CL Often FTP scripts are kept as static source members that are generally used as the FTP INPUT file. However, occasionally the script needs to be updated...

Visit site to read full content and more

Read the original at ile rpg programming: tips and techniques.

"I THINK THEREFORE IBM-i" blogs › Recommended create command defaults from AS400 to iSeries

NickLitten — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:25:48 +0000

This weekend I upgraded an old Turnover 5.4 Change Management installation to the newer V100 version across several LPAR's of a customers IBMi intallation.

As part of the mission to tidy up the Software Change process – I see a lot of objects that are routinely created with various parameters being over-ridden because the defaults don’t fit my customers software development model. Now, the problem with this is that a standard is set and then followed, sometimes blindly, for years. Obviously, any step in a compilation where the programmer has to remember to over-ride the default creation parms is time consuming and error prone.

So, wonder why IBM havent changed the defaults for these commands since the good old AS/400 days:

Could we use CHGCMDDFT to set the following parameters as new defaults:
CRTSRCPF RCDLEN(132)
Increase from old RPG3 standard 92 rcdlen, thru RPGLE standard of 112 to new RPG4/Free standard of 132
CRTPF SIZE(1000000 10000 10) REUSEDLT(*YES)
This size is routinely overridden to *NOMAX (not a good idea) so setting a more realistic default size might be appropriate? 1m records?
Set Source view in *DEBUG mode to *SOURCE allows developers to debug code and see the code it was compiled with:
CRTRPGMOD DBGVIEW(*SOURCE)
CRTCLMOD DBGVIEW(*SOURCE)
CRTBNDRPG DBGVIEW(*SOURCE)

Read the original at "I THINK THEREFORE IBM-i" blogs.

Hertvik Business Services - Joe's Blog › IT Jungle: Working around a user’s limit capabilities setting

Joe Hertvik — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:00:23 +0000

As an old IBM i (AS/400-class) administrator, I like this Patrick Botz article on IT Jungle. about expanding the limits of a user’s Limit Capabilities setting.

In it, Patrick shows you how to allow users whose Limit Capabilities parameter (LMTCPB) is set to *NO to execute specific commands they otherwise would not be able to execute on a command line. He walks you through creating an exception for allowing users to execute just one green-screen command while blocking them from running all other restricted commands.

Cool stuff. You can read Patrick’s article here.

Read the original at Hertvik Business Services - Joe's Blog.

i Can › Achieve Faster IFS Save Times Using SAV With ASYNCBRING

IBM Blogs — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:28:56 +0000

An enhancement has been made available in IBM i 7.1 and 6.1 releases that may help with integrated file system SAV performance. A new parameter,...

Read the original at i Can.

Bob Cancilla on IBM i › Move to the Cloud?

Bob — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:02:00 +0000

Is it time to put your old trusted IBM i based war horse out to pasture and move to the cloud? Most of the major traditional IBM i or OS/400 based software vendors have versions of their software that run on modern Linux or Windows platforms. There are now vendors such as Logica in the UK who offer secure reliable cloud based platforms to host these applications and more importantly guide you through the migration from your IBM i based version of software that is probably a few releases back from the vendor's current software running on modern systems.

Are you running WebSphere applications? Should you be? Proprietary (and expensive) application servers like WebSphere have given way to Apache Tomcat. You should be able to run your Java based apps on Tomcat with an improvement in productivity and a major reduction in cost.

I personally recommend moving your applications to a cloud based hosting company, engage professionals to help manage migration to your existing vendor or a new vendor's software.

It is sort of ironic that today many IBM i based companies who originally selected the AS/400 as a turnkey machine, complete with hardware and software to run their business now have a highly customized and extended set of applications that has grown their IT staff from zero to many.

What are you IT folks telling you? That RPG will be here forever that IBM will keep the IBM i OS forever? Are they telling you that you are sitting on a powder keg that can explode at anytime WHEN not IF IBM withdraws support for IBM i and the RPG programming language?

I've been working with European companies who put the best interests of their companies first over their own careers. They are with very few exceptions working to modernize and move to Linux or Windows based system and many are doing so in a combination of public and private clouds.

Clouds are pretty amazing. You can buy additional capacity when you need it to handle peak period demand on your systems. All reputable cloud vendors have automatic load balancing and replication to multiple physical data centers so that if there is a local outage your systems automatically switch to the remote site. In fact if you are a geographically distributed organization you will most likely have applications running on systems in many locations.

There is no system maintenance! It is the responsibility of the cloud vendor to keep both their hardware and software current with the latest vendor fixes and insure that they have stable reliable operating environment. Translate that to read you do not need system support people.

The total cost of cloud based operations is a fraction of what you will pay in terms of hardware, software, and people to maintain and support your own Power Systems IBM i based environment.

There was a linkedin topic that reports that going rate for an IBM i system administrator is $90k per year plus in most parts of the United States. So figure about $120k total cost. That is a lot of money for any company, but especially smaller companies with small IBM i based machines! This is a totally unnecessary expense in a cloud based environment.

Some cloud vendors can offer IBM i based systems so that you can move your systems to the cloud immediately and eliminate the costs associated with owning your own systems. You can then work with the vendor or other vendor to begin migrating to a Linux or Windows based solution for long term strategic systems.

There is absolutely no reason to own your own hardware or operate your own data centers and infrastructure today! You can save thousands to millions of dollars running your systems in a cloud.

Call or email me (see: http://www.rjcancilla.com/ContactUs.html).

Read the original at Bob Cancilla on IBM i.