Category: Featured
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It’s about time! – Time Travelling with DB2 for i
Introduction – In this article, I want to run though a great new feature of DB2 that was released as part of the Version 7.3 announcements last month. As the title of this article states ‘It’s about time’! IBM introduced a new feature within the database called temporal support. So, what is temporal support? Temporal…
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Say Hello to IBM i 7.3
Last week saw both the announcement and shipping of IBM i v7.3, just three days apart, this statement in itself tells you something about the new management style of the IBM i team, as in years gone by it would have taken weeks if not months to get from announcement to shipping. This slicker, faster…
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Using PHP and RPG to Communicate Together With DataQueues
Continuing my articles about PHP and RPG communicating together, this time I will show how these two languages can talk with each other using data queues. If you missed the other parts in this series, you can find them here. Part 1 Part 2 DataQueues If you know all about dataqueues, you can skip this…
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Creating and Mapping multiple LUs in SSP
If you’ve read any of my previous articles you’ll know that I’m a big fan of VIOS shared storage pools (SSP). I have been lambasted by a number of IBMers for using SSP instead of NPIV but my arguments are: SSPs are fast and will cope with 95%+ workloads on Power Why continue to use…
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Zipping / Unzipping IFS Objects in IBM i
Those of you who know me probably know that I’m a lapsed programmer. These days I spend most of my time working at or below the IBM i Operating System layer but every now and then there is an exception that makes me dust off my coding skills and the recent need to Zip /…
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USB Flash Drives and IBM i
USB Flash Drives, thumb drives, memory sticks, call them what you may, are pretty much everywhere these days and it is a little known fact that you can use them with your IBM i server at no cost. Support was added for these devices for POWER 7 / 8 servers from IBM i v7.1 TR6…
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Did IBM just offer you a FREE HMC?
OK, so maybe it’s not 100% free, but with the launch of the new Virtual Hardware Management Console (vHMC) the cost of the acquisition for many folks has tumbled by as much as 80% to a point where it’s almost as good as free. IBM have announced the long awaited offering, which allows you to…
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Basic AIX performance monitoring for IBM i professionals
IBM Power Systems have the ability to run both the IBM i and AIX (as well as Linux) operating systems, so how can you leverage your existing IBM i performance analysis skills to provide AIX support? Every system, from Charles Babbage’s first mechanical computers in the early nineteenth century to the high-end Power Systems we…
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Opinion: How to make your work on IBM i look good (so the platform doesn’t get replaced).
I would like to share with you a photo of my granddad dressed in a sparkly disco dancing outfit. Not really! But that’s what some people think I’m suggesting when I tell them they need to fancy up and modernise their IBM i green screens. Well, I have some breaking news for those people: green…
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Tech tip: populating the VIOS Virtual Media Repository
One of the most useful features of VIOS is the Virtual Media Repository (VMR). This allows us to create and import ISO images and then map these to virtual DVD drives on our client LPARs. Most customers will use the VMR to store their IBM i and/or AIX install media and PTFs. Many AIX sites…
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A guide to RPG definitions
I would like to take you through the process of defining variables and files in RPG programs. In an effort to promote totally free-form RPG, all the examples shown in this article detail the latest enhancements. Additionally, I will show you equivalents to RPG in other programming languages. I hope that this will give a…
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Are IBM i Services the future of systems management?
IBM i Services are perhaps the best kept secret of managing and monitoring IBM i. Relatively few users of our favourite platform know what they are and even fewer use them regularly. This is a crying shame as they are truly remarkable. IBM i Services can tell you in seconds what it takes a skilled…