News from iTech Solutions - IBM i & i5/OS · iTech Solutions because IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) didn't...
Transcript of News from iTech Solutions - IBM i & i5/OS · iTech Solutions because IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) didn't...
June 2011 iTech Solutions because IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) didn't come with a
System Administrator.
In This Issue
DR and HA Survey
Easier Signon with
Operations LAN Console
Faster IFS Saves
Upcoming Events
Release levels and PTFs
Quick Links
More About Us
Upcoming Events
Quick Links
Register Now
Last Month's
Newsletter
More About Us
Common Connect
Article on V6R1
How to make your
Greetings!
Earlier this month I was down in Alabama
doing an upgrade, and I had a free day in my
schedule. I decided to take a ride to
Tuscaloosa to see the area where the F4
tornado had gone through. This was about
6 weeks after those storms ripped through
the area, so I thought things would have
started to recover. Being from the
northeast, and never experiencing a
Tornado what I found was shocking. I was
expecting to see down trees and wind
damage. Instead what I saw was people's
entire lives just blown away. Giant trees
lying in the road and on lawns in every
direction. Trees that were as wide as a car
were thrown around like match sticks.
Houses without roofs, houses without walls,
empty slabs of concrete where houses once
stood, houses without a family, families
without homes, and communities without
people remaining. On some roads you would
look down the street, and see nothing but
total destruction in every direction. Not one
house in an entire neighborhood survived.
The destruction in the path of the tornado
Transition to IBM i
6.1 easier was mind boggling. People left for work the
morning of April 27th perhaps worrying
about small issues, and that afternoon
everything they owned, everything they
worked for was gone. It was a eerie feeling
standing in the middle of a neighborhood
without anyone around, and destruction in
every direction. The ray of hope was the
human spirit that I saw. People helping
people, and signs on many houses
proclaiming "we will be back". While it was
easy for my knees to shake surveying the
damage that mother nature can unleash, it
was good for my heart to see people fighting
back to rebuild their communities, their
neighborhoods, their houses, and their
homes. My heart goes out to those families
who suffered, and hope that their strength
will shine through as they rebuild their
homes.
So, I can imagine some of you maybe asking
"Well what does this have to do with IBM i
and System Administration". People's entire
lives were changed and possibly destroyed in
an instant when the tornado passed by.
What if some event like that happened that
affected your business? Those people that
regularly read this newsletter know I am
always talking about getting your backups
done, testing your recovery, insuring the
backups are done each night, that the
backup tapes aren't left in the tape drive or
in the computer room, etc. If something
happened to your company or even your
computer room that was a 10th as bad as
that tornado, you would have nothing left.
Nothing! So, what are you waiting for?
Check out your backups, make sure you are
moving your media off-site, make sure you
are backing up everything you need, and
insure you test out your recovery. It is
probably a good idea to talk to us about our
iTech Solutions eVault for off-site remote
backup. Your backup is immediately off-
site, and fully encrypted.
i can do anything with iTech Solutions
That is what our customers are finding out!
That their IBM i (AS/400, iSeries, i5) can do
anything when they work with iTech
Solutions. If you aren't, you can call our
customers and they will tell you why you
should.
Each month our newsletter brings to light
tips and techniques that help many System
Administrators in their job, as well as
managers know what is happening in the IBM
i world. We are happy to be able to help so
many people in the IBM i community. The
number of iTech Solutions customers is
growing each month, and that is due to our
commitment to our customers, our services,
and the support that we provide. Find out
for yourself what it is like to work with a
business partner who cares about you and
your success.
This issue of our newsletter has five articles.
In the first, I want your opinions on what you
are doing with Disaster Recovery and High
Availability. The second article is on making
Operations LAN Console easier to use. The
third article is about a PTF that improves
the time it takes to save your IFS. The fourtharticle lists some of the upcoming events inwhich iTech Solutions will be participating. The last article is for your reference withupdated PTF information.
If you are still on V5R4, send Pete an emailand he can help you upgrade to V6R1 orV7R1, with over 300 V6R1 upgrades doneto date you know iTech Solutions has theexpertise and know how.
iTech Solutions can help you improveperformance, upgrade i5/OS, performsecurity audits, implement a HighAvailability solution, Health Checks,Systems Management, RemoteAdministration, PTF management, Bladeinstallations, iSCSI Configurations,Backup/Recovery, upgrade an existingmachine, or upgrade to a new machine. Ifyou are thinking of LPAR or HMC, thenthink iTech Solutions. We have the skillsto help you get the most out of your Systemi.
For more information on any of the articles
below please visit us at on the web at iTech
Solutions or email iTech Solutions. We
would love for you to let us know any
articles that you wish for the future, or if
you enjoy any of the articles in the current
newsletters.
Disaster Recovery andHigh Availability Survey.
Last month I ran this article, as we were
looking for information on what people were
doing with Disaster Recovery & High
Availability, as well as what they were
planning on doing. I didn't get as many
responses as I needed, so I want to ask you
if you didn't get a chance last month if you
could take the survey. Thanks.
One of the things we are always interested
in is what people in the market place are
doing. Trends, directions, issues that
companies are facing. What are they doing
to fix or resolve those issues facing them.
We have seen in the past, that many people
in the i community have similar issues.
We would like to find out your opinion on
what you are doing with Disaster Recovery &
High Availability. Please click on the link
below to take this 2 minute survey and let
us know what is happening in the market
place. Everyone who completes the survey
will be entered to win one of three $100
American Express Gift certificates.
Disaster Recovery & High Availability survey.
Thanks, and we will be sharing the results
with everyone in the coming months.
You don't have to
sign-on to DST every
time you take over
the console.
Do you use Operations LAN Console for your
IBM i (AS/400 or iSeries) console? If you don't
have an HMC, this is the console that we
recommend. If you currently have a twinax
console, contact John at iTech Solutions and
have him convert you to Operations LAN
Console. The best reason is remote
connectivity, like being able to do a full
system back (Go SAVE 21) from home. Any
kind of restricted system command.
Operations LAN Console is just a blessing
when it comes to more easily managing and
administrating your machine.
One of the annoyances that happens when
you are using Operations Console, is that
when you try to reconnect to Operations
Console it asks you to enter your DST/SST
userid and password. Then the Console
Information Status screen is displayed,
where you hit F10 to take over the console.
Well, with 6.1.1 & 7.1 this sign-on can be
skipped. In fact, if you put PTFs MF44882 &
MF44894 on V5R4M5, or MF44644 & MF44647
on V6R1 you can also have this new
functionality.
With the new functionality, when you are
presented with the DST Signon screen, you
will notice an F18 function key at the
bottom of the screen. Pressing F18 will skip
the DST sign-on screen, and bring you right
to the IBM i sign-on screen for the console
device in the controlling subsystem. This
makes your life so much easier.
We have pointed this out to a few customers
during some recent health checks. The iTech
Solutions Health Check is to identify
problems you might have, best practices you
might not be following, identify performance
issues, security issues, etc. Yet, sometimes
it just takes someone to see the very simple
things that you are doing wrong. For help or
to have an iTech
Solutions Health Check contact Pete
Faster IFS Saves
IBM has released a PTF to improve the
performance of Saving the IFS. I have a few
customers who have a few million IFS
objects, so I know they will really benefit
from this. Of course, if you are on the iTech
Solutions Quarterly PTF maintenance
program, you will get this PTF as part of
your next service. For those people not on
our program, I will give you some additional
information below. You might want to get us
maintaining your machine for you, so email
us.
While one of the best ways to have faster
IFS saves is to do a little cleaning.
Unfortunately, that isn't always possible. I
have noticed that on many customer's
machines, their IFS seems to "collect"
objects. Sometimes this is because people
don't have insight into the IFS. If you are
managing your objects on your system using
the RTVDSKINF command (which collects the
information on objects in libraries residing
on your machine). You need to run the
RTVDIRINF command, which I wrote about in
a previous newsletter. This command will
gather information on all the objects in the
IFS.
The save process of the IFS can be a very I/O
intensive operation. IBM says that there will
be more CPU used after installing this PTF
during an IFS save, but in our overnight saves
at a few customers we saw the time to save
the IFS being reduced, but they weren't
keeping track of overnight CPU utilization. If
your saves are running with nothing else
running, then it won't be a problem. These
PTFs change the way a temporary structure
is accessed which results in a reduction in
the number of I/O operations. If you are
interested in the technical details, this is the
link for the informational APAR MA40515. By
the way, this is a delayed PTF which will
require an IPL to activate.
Here is the PTF for supported releases:
R540 MF52564 R545 MF52565
R610 MF52495
R611 MF52284
R710 MF52772
If you need help managing your PTFs, if you
would like us to handle your system
management, or take a look at one of our
support programs, contact Pete.
Upcoming Events.
Tuesday Sept 13 Omni User Group in Chicago
- Opening session, and technical sessions
TBA.
Tuesday Sept 27 - Vermont User group -
Technical Sessions TBA.
October 3 to 5th, in St.Petersburg, FL at the
COMMON Fall Event, Pete Massiello will
present:
What you need to know to do successful
IBM i (OS/400) upgrades to 6.1 & 7.1.
Virtual i partitions hosted by IBM i.
HMC, IBM i, FSP, Firmware: Putting all
the pieces together.
Everything you need to know to get
started with the new Systems Director
Navigator Console.
IBM i DevCon 2011 Las Vegas at Planet
Hollywood Hotel - Nov 2 to 4th. Sessions
currently being setup.
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
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.
Releases 7.1 6.1 V5R4 V5R3
Cumul. Pack 11116 11102 11137 8267
Tech. Refresh 2
Grp Hipers 34 92 157 169
DB Group 9 20 31 24
Java Group 5 15 26 23
Print Group 3 21 44 20
Backup/Recov. 10 23 41 33
Blade/IXA/IXS 6 20 14 -
Blade/IXA/IXS 6 20 14 -
HTTP 8 20 28 17
TCP/IP 3 11 18 16
The easiest way to check your levels is to
issue the command WRKPTFGRP. They
should all have a status of installed, and you
should be up to the latest for all the above,
based upon your release. Now there are
more groups than the ones listed above, but
these are the general ones that most people
require. We can help you know which group
PTFs you should be installing on your
machine based upon your licensed programs.
Here is a nice tidbit. The Cumulative PTF
package number is broken down as YDDD,
where Y is the year and DDD is the day it
was released. Therefore, if we look at the
cumulative package for V5R4, the ID is 9104.
We can determine that it was created on the
104th day of 2009, which is April 14, 2009.
Look at your machine and this will give you a
quick indication of just how far out of date
in PTFs you may be. I left V5R1 & V5R2 off
the list, because if you are on V5R1 or V5R2,
you don't need to be worrying about PTFs,
you really need to be upgrading your
operating system. The same can be said for
V5R3, but there are still customers who are
on those releases.
If you have an HMC, you should be
running V7R7.3M0. If your HMC is a C03, then
it should stay at V7R3.5 SP3.
For your Flexible Service Processor (FSP)
that is inside your Power 5 or Power5+ (520,
515, 525, 550, 570), the code level of the
FSP should be 01_SF240_403. Power 6 (940x
M15, M25, & M50 machines, and 8203-E4A &
8204-E4A) customers should be running
EL350_107. For Power6 (MMA, 560, and 570
machines) your FSP should be at EM350_107.
If you have a Power6 595 (9119) then you
should be on EH350_107. POWER7 the
firmware level is AL730_035 for 8202-E4B
(710, 720, 730, 740), AL730_035 for 750
(8233-E8B) & 755 (8236-E8C). Use
AM730_035 for 770 (9117-MMB) & 780 (9179-
MHB).
If you need help with upgrading your HMC or
FSP just give us a call. We will be happy to
perform the function for you or assist you in
doing it. Contact Pete Massiello.
We have the skills to help you get the most
out of your IBM i. For more information on
any of the articles please contact us at
[email protected] . We would also like to
know what you think of this newsletter and
any items you would like us to discuss in
future issues.
Our staff of Certified i5/OS professionals can
help you get more out of your machines.
Remember,
i want everything to work.
i want control.
i want an i
i need iTech Solutions.
Sincerely,
Pete Massiello
Pete Massiello
iTech Solutions
www.itechsol.com