Author: Steve Bradshaw
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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…
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Opinion – Give British IBM i users a SWMA amnesty
As you will all know, IBM has an annual charge for its software maintenance (SWMA) for IBM i. This maintenance gives you access to IBM support, fixes, new functions and features (in the form or PTFs) and, of course, free upgrades to newer IBM i releases. What you may not realise is that if you…
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How to delete directories from your IFS
This article was inspired by a recent support call I received. It made me realise that many of you may not have noticed that IBM added a handy parameter to the RMVDIR (remove directory) command back in v6.1 called SUBTREE. Let me set the scene and you can work out whether this is something that…
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The end of IBM i Access for Windows
It has been known as many things over the years: PC Support, Personal Communications, Client Access, iSeries Access. Now its latest name, IBM i Access for Windows, would seem to be its last. Love it or hate it, over the last 20 years we have all grown used to it and so when I was…
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How to speed up your IBM i backups
With the ever increasing pressure to get more from our existing infrastructures, many of you will be under pressure to extend the working day of your companies’ IT systems. This means that scheduling regular downtime to perform appropriate backup is becoming more and more of an issue. There are of course several solutions that allow…
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Five reasons to love your Hardware Management Console
For a while, I’ve noticed that most IBM i sites that have Hardware Management Consoles (HMCs) don’t seem to show them much love. In fact, in many cases I would go as far to say that they actively go out of their way to ignore them. If you have an HMC, ask yourself one question.…
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How to take advantage of the new, smaller IBM i 7.2
With the release of IBM i version 7.2 Technology Refresh 1, Big Blue has reduced the size requirement for the load-source disk for virtualised storage implementations. “So what?” I hear you cry. “All my disks are physical, they are bigger than 70GB and have been for years. What’s the big deal?” Well, for production workloads,…
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7.2 things I love about IBM i 7.2 (part 2)
It’s hard to believe it but 2014, the year that brought us v7.2 and Power8, is almost over. Indeed, it may well be gone by the time you read this. So, without further ado, here is part two of my list of things that I love about version 7.2 of our favourite operating system. Number…
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7.2 Things I Love About IBM i 7.2 (Part 1)
I recently gave a presentation at an i-UG event in England on some of the new features in IBM i v7.2. In an attempt to make it a little more fun (and in tribute to Friday nights as a young lad), I delivered this in the style of a Top of the Pops-type countdown. If…
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Is the new HMC interface enhanced or not?
IBM has rather quietly brought out a new interface to its Hardware Management Console (HMC). This became an option in V8R8.1 Service Pack1 of the HMC. IBM has called it the enhanced interface and you will have an option to select it at log in. Don’t worry, you’ll know it when you see it. Before…
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IBM i 7.2: How to look into the future with Batch Model
Continuing my recent system performance theme, the next IBM i 7.2 function I’d like to discuss is called Batch Model. Perhaps not the most descriptive of names but, mercifully, it is short. And, despite its name, it does in fact analyse all types of workload, not just batch. When I first heard about it, I…
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IBM i 7.2: Finding the job that is killing your system
In my last article, I mentioned that it would be nice if there was tool that you could use to find the cause of performance problems on your system. I knew that IBM had been improving the Performance Tools that came with IBM i but I hadn’t realised just how much it had packed in.…