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How to Become a Happier Mainframe Professional

Some people might think that working on a mainframe every day is enough to make anyone happy, but as a mainframe professional, what could you do to make yourself happier? The usual response when people are asked what would make them happier is to suggest that they would like a higher salary and more time […]

How to Check NPIV Virtual Fibre Channel Adapter Mapping on AIX

Starting with AIX 7.2 TL5 SP3 (and VIOS 3.1.3.00), AIX/Power System administrators can use an alternative to kdb for viewing VIOS “identifying info” from client AIX LPARs. For example: # cat /proc/sys/adapter/fc/fcs0/hostinfo fcs0 VFC client adapter name : fcs0 Host partition name (VIOS) : vio1 VFC host adapter name : vfchost0 VFC host adapter location […]

Monitoring Tools for Power Systems and AIX

Monitoring tools improve service availability and productivity by proactively identifying, diagnosing and repairing slow or otherwise unstable connections. On the other hand, management tools ensure that your system is available, configured properly and its components are connected correctly and as expected, whereas monitoring tools look for overall system, communication, and application performance impacts. For above-mentioned […]

AIX 7.3 Leverages Power10 Processor to Support Customers’ Hybrid Multicloud and AI Endeavors

The new AIX 7.3 release brings customers new ways to integrate their mission critical infrastructure with new and enhanced capabilities. IBM designed AIX 7.3 in response to feedback from customers, particularly around extracting business value from data and supporting their hybrid multicloud strategies. Its new features take advantage of the unique capabilities of the Power10 […]

A New AIX Video Series and the Latest on AIX Open Beta and Power10

A quick professional note: I’ve launched a video series for TechChannel. I’ve recorded three so far, including my latest on the Technical Support Appliance (TSA). Take a moment to check them out—the videos all clock in at around four minutes—and then send me suggestions for topics you’d like to see covered going forward. Being new […]

Bringing Choice, Consistency and Protection to Hybrid Cloud Strategies

Hybrid cloud has quickly grown in popularity, but with this extensive growth it’s more important than ever for organizations to develop strategies that address cost control, IT complexity, cybersecurity threats and data corruption. When developing a hybrid cloud strategy, notes Scott Baker, VP, Storage Product Marketing for IBM, it’s important for organizations to define what […]

Active Prestart Jobs in New Navigator

With New Nav, you have a graphical user interface and you no longer need to craft your own queries to get at the data. Learn the benefits from Dawn May here.

COBOL and IBM Z Longevity

What do COBOL and IBM have in common? They have the same middle name: business! In an era when consumer electronics personal computing and the idea that everything computing “wants to be free,” it can be easy to forget the essential role of business in the very existence and relevance of computing. Of course, the […]

Latest IBM Storage Announcements Address Key Hybrid Cloud Pain Points for Clients

As hybrid cloud environments grow in popularity, organizations must develop strategies that address increasing IT complexity, public cloud costs, cyberattack threats and other data destructive events. Today, IBM in announcing new capabilities and integrations designed to mitigate these pain points—helping organizations reduce IT complexity, deploy cost-effective solutions and improve cyberresilience across hybrid cloud environments. These […]

Special Report: COBOL Survey Results Prove Pervasiveness, Value and a Bright Future

“Housework is something that nobody notices unless you don’t do it.” So the old saw goes. And it’s easy to see why—or rather to fail to see when you can just take it for granted. In the same way, looking at the limited general awareness of COBOL’s role in the world of digital commerce, one […]

TechChannel E-book: How to Effectively Monitor and Measure Your Data Center

Running an efficient data center requires constant monitoring and measurement. This means understanding everything from storage best practices and tools for maximizing performance. Data temperature, for example, often determines the percentage of budget that gets devoted to storing different types of data. Once you create process maps based on the data’s temperature, you can better […]

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Use Cases for SQL’s CASE statement

Have you ever wanted to conditionally do some processing in an SQL SELECT statement? I‘m sure you have, as this isn’t really an unusual situation. In RPG and other languages, we have the IF or SELECT statements for this. In an SQL procedure, you can also use IF. But in a SELECT statement, the way […]

Carol Woodbury on Security Strategies and Best Practices

Charlie Guarino: Hi everybody. This is Charlie Guarino. Welcome to another edition of TechTalk SMB. I am so happy today to sit down and have a nice chat with the former IBM i security architect of IBM i and the current co-founder of DXR Security, a company that helps organizations change their IBM i security one […]

Rudi Van Helvoirt on COVID-19 and the Future of SQL Programming

Paul Tuohy: Hi everyone and welcome to another iTalk with Tuohy. I'm delighted to be joined today by, I think long overdue iTalk with my friend, my colleague and IBM Champion Rudi Van Helvoirt. Rudi, how are you?   Rudi Van Helvoirt: I'm fine.   Paul: Did I kill your name? Was I close enough in the […]

Protecting Data Within New HA/DR Parameters

There are two types of organizations in the world: those that have experienced unplanned system downtime and those that will. Of the first group, many have likely tightened up their high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) methods and tools as a result of their incidents, moving, for example, to hosted cloud-based HA/DR services. Within the […]

The Cost of Enterprise Downtime

Enterprise downtime is now more expensive than ever: Some 44% of firms indicate that hourly downtime costs exceed $1 million to over $5 million, exclusive of any legal fees, fines or penalties. Additionally, 91% organizations said a single hour of downtime that takes mission-critical server hardware and applications offline, averages over $300,000 due to lost […]

The Importance of Cloud-Based HA/DR Technology

For many organizations, budgeting discussions for disaster recovery (DR) and high availability (HA) have played out in a similar manner for decades: The IT department asks to spend a set amount for capital expenditures and a set amount for operating expenses. However, the infrastructure needed to back up the data center and networks in case […]

Using Power10’s Superfast AI With Event Streaming

IBM’s latest generation of Power processors is no incremental update. It comes with built-in acceleration for artificial intelligence (AI)! This is done by integrating matrix math assist (MMA) units right into the chip. Trust me, this is a game-changer for IBM i! I was first involved with IBM i and AI back in 2017. We […]

Rob McNelly on the IBM Support Technical Support Appliance

Rob McNelly looks at the Technical Support Appliance (TSA) from IBM support. Transcript As I crossed the finish line after swimming 425 yards, biking 15 miles, and running 5 kilometers in the sprint triathlon I recently completed, I realized that I had not talked about the TSA lately. If you are an American you are […]

Meet the TechChannel Rising Stars on IBM Power Systems

This year, TechChannel begins a new tradition—acknowledging Rising Stars in the Power Systems community who have pushed the boundaries of what is possible since joining the ecosystem within the last five years. Formerly known as the IBM Fresh Faces program, the TechChannel Rising Stars initiative—which will run once a year—aims to recognize the next generation of […]

TechChannel E-book: How to Enhance Your Data Storage Strategy

Running an efficient data center requires constant monitoring and measurement. This means understanding everything from storage best practices and tools for maximizing performance. Data temperature, for example, often determines the percentage of budget that gets devoted to storing different types of data. Once you create process maps based on the data’s temperature, you can better […]

How Much Does a Data Breach Cost?

For the past 16 years, IBM has published research by the Ponemon Institute in the annual “Cost of a Data Breach Report.” Its 17th report was published at the end of July this year, and perhaps the biggest finding was that 2020 had the highest average cost for a data breach in 17 years. The cost […]

IBM i New Navigator

One of the most exciting functions is Navigator for i – new version!, which IBM refers to as “New Nav.” The existing Navigator web console is now called the “Heritage Version.” The IBM announcement included the following text: “Navigator for i has been completely reimagined from the ground up. Leveraging the very latest in web technology, […]

Random and ‘Almost Random’ Numbers on z/OS

Random numbers can come in handy. They can be used to create a unique filename, generate a random new password, or randomly select a record. The good news is that we can obtain random numbers on z/OS. Well, at least some of them are random. COBOL and RANDOM A quick look at the IBM Enterprise […]

Integration Station: Announcing IBM i 7.4 TR5

IBM i 7.4 TR5 offers an all-new web interface for IBM Navigator for I, new HTTP SQL functions, open-source inclusion and more