A screen a Story

Being a system administrator in the GUI era, it seems almost impossible to ignore the IBM i GUIs. Having said that it is my experience that a lot of sysadmins try to ignore those GUI, which were not part of day-1, when they started working. They are, as would I say, more or less glued to the CLI, the 5250 emulation. One of my rules, is that you are happy with something, until the moment you bump into something which is better.

This article is the first one in the series “A Screen a Story”. I hope it will start you using the IBM i GUIs and getting comfortable with them.

The Screen

The screenshot is taken from: Navigator for i => Backup, Recovery and Media Services => System Policy Properties.

The question is why would you want to add an IP address to BRMS when it is running in restricted state?

The answer is very simple, because you want to know what is going on when running in restricted state, especially when you are making a Full System save with BRMS in batch restricted state or from the console. Instead of sitting behind the console and taking a look now and then, it is by far easier to have a look at your mail. It will allow you to build a record of how long every step of the Full System save is taking and more important because everything is realtime it will tell you when the BRMS will be ready. There is one minor detail you should be aware of, for doing this you will need an extra IBM LPAR which is enabled for mailing to the outside world.

In the next episode of ‘A Screen a Story’, I will inform you how to set up a mailing process in BRMS.

I think they call that a ‘Cliffhanger’ in proper English