Author: Steve Bradshaw
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IBM i Dashboard
In all of those cool computer control rooms you see in the movies, there is always some simple screen that the technician looks at when there is a problem. Admittedly this computer techie is not normally the hero of the movie, nor are they usually the most dashing of characters but nevertheless, they have a…
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Do I need to pay for Java?
Over the last few months, you may have noticed some rather confusing messages about the need to pay for Java. They imply that you need to pay to use Java if you are a business, and in some cases this will be true but in most cases you will NOT need to pay a penny.…
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Don’t have a Meltdown over Spectre
You would have to be living under a rock not to have heard about the latest class of security vulnerabilities that have been found. These are known by the catchy names of Meltdown and Spectre. Now those of you who know me (and my love of patching servers) will be forgiven if you think this…
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Say hello to the new POWER9 and go buy a POWER8
IBM has just announced the all new POWER9 based AC922 model and it looks great! I’ll talk about that a little more later but for now just know that it’s faster than ever but these first models are focusing on AI (Artificial Intelligence) and will be running Linux only. We can expect to see the…
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Time to say bye bye to 7.1
“Alas, poor 7.1! I knew him, Horatio: an O/S of infinite Roch-est, of most excellent Resili-ancy: he hath borne me on his back-up a thousand times”. OK so I confess that is quite possibly the most painful Shakespeare kludge I have ever read too. If you can do better, please feel free to share with…
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Wanna Use SMB v2
If you need NetServer you need the last from IBM i. Netserver (the IBM i Service that allows you to map a network drive) and QNTC (the ability to read and write to a Windows Share directly from your IBM i) have been around so long now it’s hard to imagine life without them. Many…
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Aggregated Ethernet – Faster and more resilient networking
Have any of you ever lost connectivity to your server because someone accidentally disconnected the wrong cable? It is so annoying as in many cases even if the cable was plugged back in you still had to answer a message on QSYSOPR to tell your system that it’s OK to start using the network connection…
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WRKJOBSCDE – Working with Job Scheduled Entries
OK, OK, OK, I know this command has been around since the beginning of time but there are a couple of things I find that most people I work with do not realise about this command that can be really useful. So, just bear with me here and check that you know this before you…
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Keep an eye on your cache batteries with QSMBTTCC
Those of you who have suffered from an unexpected cache battery failure (SRC nnnn8008) will know how much pain it can cause. Whilst there is never any danger to your data, in many cases the performance of your server can be reduced by a factor of ten! So this month I thought I would show…
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IBM i SNTP – Automatic Time Adjustment
Last month I wrote about how you could get your IBM i to automatically adjust its clock for Daylight Saving Time adjustments, this month we take it one step further and see how its trivial to get your clock to keep itself in sync constantly with other services on your network using SNTP Simple Network…
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IBM i Daylight Saving Time Management
Spring is on its way (Halleluiah!) and next month the clocks with be springing forward an hour. As a boy (and the youngest of my clan) I remember it was always a job given to me to go around the house and change the dozen or so clocks that we had around the place. Nowadays…
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IBM i 7.3 – Authority Collection Services
One of the great new functions IBM has built into IBM i as standard, and free of charge in 7.3, is the Authority Collection Services. This works a little like the performance collection services, in that you start it for one or more users to monitor access to objects in one or more Libraries or…