[VIDEO] POWER9 & HMC: Unpacking, Racking, Installation, and Setup

What happens when a POWER9 arrives to your office? How’s it packaged? What does it look like? How do you even begin to install it?

We recently received our brand new POWER9 and Power based HMC in our office, and thought we would show you how to unpack, rack, and install them together.
Nathan Williams and I do these all the time, so we thought we would make a video for those of you who may get a new POWER9 server and needs some instructions.

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How To: IBM i Services Tools Security Log

There is an audit log to monitor service function use by service tools users. You can monitor the use of service functions through the dedicated service tools (DST) security log or through the IBM i security audit log. These logs help you trace unusual access patterns or potential security risks. Below is information on how to access these logs for reference and use.

To work with the Service Tools security log, complete the following steps:

1) Access service tools using DST on the console (To force a Dedicate Service Tools (DST) sign on for a partition), you have 2 ways depending on how your console is connected.

• On an HMC (Version 7 & 8) managed system, do the following:
  • Step 1: Open the console session.
    • Power on and connect the device used as the console, (Be on the console sign on screen).
  • Step 2: On the HMC, expand Systems Management > Servers. Click on the Select column on the target partition.
  • Step 3: In the Tasks panel (or Tasks button), expand Serviceability > Control Panel Functions. Click on (21) Activate Dedicated Service Tools.
  • Step 4: Click OK when the status window appears. 
    • The partition console session will now have the DST log-in panel.

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The Scary Truth About IBM i Security Pushbacks

If you’re looking to make improvements to your IBM i security, then you need to be able to get your whole team on the same page, which sometimes can mean common oppositions.

But, does your team know the scary truth on the other side of those rebuttals?

Here are a number of counterpoints to help you make security a priority in your shop.

1. We trust our employees

It is important to hire those you trust and to maintain relationships to continuing to vet security worthiness. However, realism is called for as well.

Do you give all employees full access keys to your manufacturing facility? Do you give them all company credit cards? How about full access to your financial systems?

Of course not, unless you give them *ALLOBJ special authority and therefore they own the system. Do you really think somehow a menu system is going to keep them out of the sensitive stuff?

Look at the corollary. Should your employees trust you?

When they give you their social insurance number, date of birth, legal name, banking information for direct deposit,  you are responsible for protecting that data. I would imagine that any employee would assume you have proper data controls in place. Furthermore, I would assume as someone who is security literate,  if I give anyone my information, it is properly controlled and also encrypted so that it can’t be read easily when exported to a USB drive, sent to tape or intercepted in transit.

2.We have a firewall

And so does everybody else.

When was the last time your firewall was taken down for software patching? Whether personal or corporate, firewalls are just one of those devices that never gets updated because of two reasons:

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A Disaster Recovery Perfect Storm

The situation:

The system bezel said that it couldn’t find the disk drives which could’ve been a number of failing parts. This system had a single disk drive mirrored to another. The backup was questionable (i.e., the customer couldn’t guarantee what was on it) on ¼ inch tapes so it was not really compatible with current technology. Also, the customer did not have an active hardware/software maintenance contract. The system was set up for operations console but there was no cable nor operations console PC in the building. No LIC DVD was available either. These are the facts of the situation.

Settling on a plan:

An IBM customer engineer (CE) was dispatched at their hourly rate with a four-hour minimum and a purchase order required up front. That’s standard. IBM arrived on-site at 2 PM as they were a 90-minute drive away. Since there was no available console and no LIC DVD present, plus the CE didn’t bring a 5.4 LIC DVD, there’s not much they could do that late in the day. When you’re paying IBM time and materials, they don’t necessarily work on the weekend. Time and materials mean when they have the time and if they have the materials, within a 9 to 5 window during the business day. Customers with 24×7 maintenance contracts come first so we contemplated the scenarios with IBM about how to move forward.

We settled on a two-prong approach: we would prepare a cloud recovery and IBM will continue diagnosing the problem locally.

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Managing Firmware: Using UAK Management Feature

There are two ways of using this UAK management feature:

• Manual: A system administrator can manually kick off the process of checking UAK’s expiration date, downloading UAK, and applying UAK. This is accomplished by running the WRKSRVAGT TYPE(*UAK) command. This can also be accomplished by running the go service command to access the Electronic Service Agent on IBM i main menu, then selecting option 20 (Check and refresh Update Access Key).

• Automatic: By default, there is no automatic UAK checking. The Change Service Agent Attribute (CHGSRVAGTA) command can be used to enable automatic checking, which creates or causes the creation of the job scheduler entry. The CHGSRVAGTA command parameter (REFRESHUAK) can be used to establish automatic UAK management. By default, a job will be run every Sunday, but can be easily customized.

Enablement steps:

1. Enter CHGSRVAGTA and press F4.
2. Enter Yes for Enable.
3. Press Page Down.

Refresh UAK:

Enable . . . . . . . . . . . .   *YES          *SAME, *YES, *NO

Schedule day . . . . . . . . .   *SUN          *SAME, *SUN, *MON, *TUE…

Run time . . . . . . . . . . .   081900        Time, *SAME, *CURRENT

This job scheduler job was created as a result of a PTF for 7.2 (SI58783). This job is in error on your system because:

Message . . . . :   Download and apply Update Access Key stopped.

Cause . . . . . :   Something happened during the process, which caused the  termination. Reason code 2 . Recovery  . . . :   Reason codes and

their meaning: 2 — This is not a power 8 system, which doesn’t support apply key action.

So, in this case (BEVO), you can either put it on hold, or change the CHGSRVAGTA parameter for Refresh of UAK to Enable *NO, and this will or should remove this job from the job scheduler.

Release levels and PTFs

People are always asking me how often they should be performing PTF maintenance, and when is the right time to upgrade their operating system. I updated this article from last month with the current levels of PTFs. Let’s look at PTFs. First, PTFs are Program Temporary Fixes that are created by IBM to fix a problem that has occurred or to possibly prevent a problem from occurring. In addition, some times PTFs add new functionality, security, or improve performance. Therefore, I am always dumbfounded as to why customers do not perform PTF maintenance on their machine at least quarterly.

If IBM has come out with a fix for your disk drives, why do you want to wait for your disk drive to fail with that problem, only to be told that there is a fix for that problem, and if you had applied the PTF beforehand, you would have averted the problem. Therefore, I think a quarterly PTF maintenance strategy is a smart move. Many of our customers are on our quarterly PTF maintenance program, and that provides them with the peace of mind of knowing their system is up to date on PTFs. Below is a table of the major group PTFs for the last few releases. This is what we are installing for our customers on iTech Solutions Quarterly Maintenance program.

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IBM i Hardware and OS End of Support Dates

IBM POWER Server Lifecycle Dates

IBM i Lifecycle Dates