Release levels and PTFs (July 2019)
Below are IBM i, FSP, and HMC release levels and PTFs for July 2019. This is what we are installing for our customers on iTech Solutions Quarterly Maintenance program.…
Below are IBM i, FSP, and HMC release levels and PTFs for July 2019. This is what we are installing for our customers on iTech Solutions Quarterly Maintenance program.…
The Hardware Management Console (HMC) is a strange beast. Anyone with a partitioned system needs one, and it can be an indispensable tool for anyone whose desk isn’t within 100 yards of the machine room…but it isn’t part of the system itself and it usually isn’t critical to everyday operations once things are up and running. Is it part of your critical path or is it an accessory largely to be forgotten? To answer that question, let’s examine how the HMC relates to your system and how IBM supports the HMC.
The HMC is a tool which allows us to manage the hardware contained inside a Power Systems server. By communicating with the POWER system’s Flexible Service Processor (FSP), it provides an interface to allocate processor, memory, storage, and I/O to each logical partition and manage those resources dynamically. Perhaps most importantly, the HMC lets us access each partition’s console session, which we need when operating in a restricted state. While some of these functions may be viewed as “one and done” tasks that only happen when the machine is first set up, it is important to remember that we never know what tomorrow might bring. Business needs to change and POWER-based hardware is flexible enough to turn corners, but it needs an HMC to do the steering. Your system runs your business, and the HMC runs your system. It should be clear from this relationship that the HMC can’t be ignored.…
Found and interesting option the other day I wanted to share, it is not new but something I think most people don’t know. IBM created a program that you can run to display the status of all your cache batteries. This is great because you don’t need to sign on to SST and take several options to get to the individual batteries to check the cache battery days remaining. Just execute this program in QSYS – (CALL QSYS/QSMBTTCC). It should run on any system 5.4 or over, you may have to get a PTF for systems older than 7.2. Here is a list of the PTFs you will need, they can be applied *Immed
For i5/OS V5R4Mx – SI40403, V6R1Mx – SI40404, V7R1Mx – SI40406…
On July 2, 2019, IBM announced that 15K RPM hard disk drives would no longer be available for new orders of its Storwize V5000 and V7000 storage systems, US announcement letter 119-048. Why did IBM make this announcement and what does it mean for IBM i customers?
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No matter the time of the year, there’s always a chance of the unplanned happening. This means you’re at risk, especially if you haven’t done a recovery test of your backups recently. What are you waiting for, a natural disaster?
While it may be common sense that you need to keep a copy of your backups offsite for recoverability, we encounter many companies who are not religious about removing tapes from the drive. It’s imperative that you store your backups offsite in case of a disaster. It doesn’t matter if you use physical tapes or virtual tapes, you need to make sure there is a copy in a second location.
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This newsletter includes:
I am writing this as I sit in my hotel room in northern California, my 2nd of 3 trips to California over the course of 4 weeks. The team and I have been flying around the country installing new POWER9 systems.
Alaska, California, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Maine, and Virginia. That is a lot of flying, a lot of trips, and a lot of CPWs getting installed. So, I can report that we had a great second quarter, and with all the traveling for installing POWER9 machines, you can see why.
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