This newsletter includes:

• Managed Services by Yvonne Enselman 
• Discontinuance of maintenance services for select IBM machines
• Open Source on IBM i
• Release Levels and PTFs

We are coming to a city near you, if you live in the Northeast of the US.  Starting Sept 28, we will be once again presenting our Power8 and IBM i 7.3 roadshow.  We invite you to come and hear all the latest information on Power 8 Servers and details about what is in IBM i 7.3.  There is no charge for registration, so we hope to see you there.

As you know we have been upgrading customers all year, but I just wanted to share what a customer wrote to us today, after doing an upgrade last weekend.  They were running a Power6 with LTO-4 tape technology, one of the problems they were having was their full backup each weekend was taking over 11 hours.  We installed a new Power8 machine with Solid State Disks, and also 4 times the memory.  In addition, we upgraded their tape technology to LTO7 with the new high performance tape adapter.  Their backup went from over 11 hours to just under 2 hours. That is one heck of a difference.  In addition, this upgrade was justified on the maintenance savings.  Of course, regular batch jobs are seeing the same performance improvement.  If we can help you, just contact our sales team.

In March we released our first IBM i State of the Union and the positive comments and the number of downloads has been phenomenal.  We just completed updating this to include everything from the first half of 2016, you can get a copy on our website.

As we have been publishing our monthly newsletter now for almost 9 years, we continue to help our customers and members of the IBM i community get the most from their IBM i and Power Systems investment.  If your current business partner isn’t providing you with the same value, switch to iTech Solutions by calling our sales team at 203-744-7854 then press 3 for the sales team.

This issue of our newsletter has 6 articles. In the first article we tell you about our Power8 and IBM i Roadshows coming to the cities in the northeast US. The second article is from Yvonne on what Managed Services are, and how they can help you. The third article on selected IBM products being withdrawn from maintenance coverage, and the dates.  The fourth is on IBM i Open Source, and the option available to you.  The fifth article lists some of the upcoming events in which iTech Solutions will be participating. The last article is for your reference with updated PTF information. Please note that for all 7.1 customers that are on the Quarterly or Semi-annual iTech Solutions PTF maintenance plan, we will be installing 7.1 Technology Refresh 11 for you on your next application of PTFs. For the 7.2 customers, we will be installing 7.2 Technology Refresh 3.

Having a business partner isn’t the same as having iTech Solutions. If you are not getting the support, the help, the guidance, and the advice you need to succeed, then you owe it to yourself to contact iTech Solutions for all your IBM Power Systems running IBM i needs. We can help you upgrade your AS/400 or iSeries to a Power Systems running IBM i, or even your existing POWER5, POWER6, or POWER7 machines to POWER8.

iTech Solutions vast experience can help you improve performance, perform security audits, implement a high availability solution, perform health checks, systems management, remote administration, PTF management, cloud-based systems, hosting, replication, and backup/recovery; upgrade an existing machine; or upgrade to a new machine.  If you are thinking of LPAR or HMC, then think iTech Solutions.  We have the skills to help you get the most out of your IBM i.

For more information on any of the articles below please visit us 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.

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iTech Solutions Power8 and IBM i 7.3 roadshows are coming to you.

Join us for an IBM Power8 and IBM i 7.3 Roadshow sponsored by iTech Solutions Group, where you will learn about the exciting new announcements that emphasize IBM’s continued commitment to the Power Systems platform and the IBM i operating system.

The Roadshow is about what is new and exciting with the IBM Power8 servers and the latest level of the OS. If you are operating any of IBM’s iSeries, Power5, Power6, or Power 7 servers these Roadshow presentations will have everything you need to know about how the new Power8 servers can vastly improve your IT environment and reduce operating costs.

Pete Massiello of iTech Solutions Group, an IBM Premier Business Partner, will present two sessions at each of these roadshow locations.

Session Highlights to include:

• IBM Power Systems Roadmap and Commitment to i
• How Organizations are running mission-critical workloads on Power8 with reduced TCO
• Understanding of IBM Power8 processors, enhancements and new features
• Discussion of IBM i 7.3 newest enhancements including: DB2,  Security, and System Management
• Reducing system downtime with High Availability and Backup options

 

iTech Solutions Roadshow Schedule:	Session Time (Registration 30 min prior)	Location
Wed – Sept 28, 2016	2:00pm –   5:00pm	Ramada Plaza, Portland, ME
Thur – Sept 29, 2016	9:00am – 12:00pm	The Yard Restaurant, Manchester, NH
Thur – Sept 29, 2016	2:00pm –  5:00pm	Onyx Hotel, Boston, MA
Thur – Oct 6, 2016	9:00am – 12:00pm	Providence Marriott Downtown, Providence, RI
Thur – Oct 6, 2016	2:00pm – 5:00pm	Sheraton Tara, Framingham, MA
Wed – Oct 12, 2016	9:00am – 12:00pm	Norwalk Inn, Norwalk, CT
Wed – Oct 19, 2016	2:00pm – 5:00pm	Albany, NY
Thur – Oct 20, 2016	10:00am – 1:00pm	Burlington, VT
Wed – Nov 2, 2016	9:00am – 12:00pm	Holiday Inn, Fairfield, NJ
Wed – Nov 2, 2016	1:00pm – 5:00pm	Westbury Manor, Westbury, NY
Thur – Nov 3, 2016	9:00am – 12:00pm	IBM 590 Madison Ave, New York City, NY

We don’t have all the hotel locations, as you can see  Albany, and Burlington don’t yet have a hotlink.  They will shortly.

To register for one of these sessions, choose from the locations listed and click the date of the event in your area. For more information you can always contact [email protected] or dial 203-744-7854 press 3 for sales.

 

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Managed Services by Yvonne Enselman 

Since joining iTech a year ago as the Managed Services Coordinator the question I have been asked more than any other is, “What are Managed Services and why do they require coordination?”

The simple answer is they are a way of using the talents and resources of iTech to supplement an IT department.

However, that lends itself to even more information and detail.

My favorite answer is, “you know when you get to that one area where things never go simply and you think to yourself, I wish Pete (or one of his technicians) were here to help me…” They can be.

As with everything relating to IBM i on Power Systems installations and teams vary widely. Likewise, the level of knowledge and ability needed to maintain the system and administer is diverse. Add to this the usual staffing and resource concerns and the need for a Managed Service Provider is easy to understand.

The services that iTech can provide are customizable and unique to each partner we work with. (Hence the need for coordination.) Things like PTF maintenance and support is a common service we provide; taking care of updating the image catalogs, applying, scheduling and supervising the IPL on a quarterly basis. Another area is backup and replication; from setting up the utilities and tools, monitoring same, and providing the cloud based solutions. Other examples get more involved and use more of the advanced skill sets iTech has to offer.

The services mentioned above make sense to a lot of organizations. It takes a task away from a resource bound team and brings in expertise to ensure it goes as smoothly as possible. Even in shops where there is a full time administrator or team outsourcing routine functions can result in cost saving.

However, when IT departments are faced with more limited administrator resources there are additional services we offer. For many of our customers we partner more closely and actually perform the actions of a IBM i administrator. In these cases, Pete, Nate, Matt, Chris, and Kevin monitor the health of the system daily and are on hand for all IBM i needs. PTFs, Disk Usage, message monitoring, printer issues, communications, back-ups, replication all can be handled. It is commonly described as time slicing a system administrator for organizations that need someone all the time but don’t have a resource with the skills, time, or experience to effectively support this system.

One of the best things about partnering with iTech is our responsiveness to your system. Monitoring software is in use in many organizations but is only as useful as the professionals responding to it. The technicians at iTech have over 100 years of experience between them and these are the guys responding to your help desk requests.

Of course every customer has different needs and that is where iTech can shine. The guys have in depth knowledge of just about everything that needs doing on an IBM i and for one reasonable monthly cost our customers get all of that experience. This year we have worked on projects as diverse as FTP monitoring, single sign on, backup procedures to every type of OS upgrade combination imaginable. All of this is done by working closely with the departments we supplement and communicating regularly.

In the past year I have gotten to know our MSP customers well and understand their needs. From meeting scheduling, report writing, and note taking I make sure everyone involved has the needed information and can review what has been done lately. Then we provide project support and management for larger initiatives and plans. We truly partner with these customers and become a team within their department to assist as needed.

If you would like to discuss how iTech Solutions can help you, please send me an email.  Our Administrators have the skills, knowledge, and experience to perform any other IBM i System Admin functions.

 

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Discontinuance of maintenance services for select IBM machines.

Last month, IBM announced that it was giving customers notice that it would terminate maintenance for certain older machines.  Some business partners ran around telling everyone the sky was falling. First, I would say relax.  You have time to get things resolved, as the old Power5 9402, 9404, and 9406 machines are being withdrawn from service effective 1/31/2019.  Now, don’t wait until the last minute, but if you start your project now to upgrade to a newer machine, you should have plenty of time to get a new machine, and upgrade the Operating System.  With the age of these older machines, you will certainly also need to get to a new release.  Note that some of the older HMCs will be discontinued from maintenance services 1/31/2018. Contact our sales team for help and guidance. Below is the official list and dates.

Services withdrawal: Declaration of plan to discontinue lease, rental, and maintenance services for selected machines

 

Again, contact our sales team and together with our technical team they can help you migrate to newer, faster, less expensive IBM Power Systems running IBM i.

 

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Open Source on IBM i

People are always asking me what Open Source options are available on IBM i.  I think that IBM i has become an incubator for the many open source languages that are available today.  Below is a list of the options and what you can be running on your IBM i.

 

5733-OPS Option 1	Node.js  V1
5733-OPS Option 2	Python  3
5733-OPS Option 3	GCC & CHROOT
5733-OPS Option 4	Python 2
5733-OPS Option 5	Node.js  v4
5733-OPS Option 6	Git
5733-OPS Option 7	Tools
5733-OPS Option 8	Orion
5733-OPS Option 9	cloud-init
5733-OPS Option 10	TBD
5733-OPS Option 11	TBD
5733-OPS Option 12	TBD
5733-OPS Option 13	TBD
5733-OPS Option 14	TBD
5733-OPS Option 15	TBD

For help installing Open Source Languages on your IBM i, please contact Pete.

 

 

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Upcoming Events Some of the events that we will be speaking at or exhibiting at are listed below. Don’t forget the iTech Solutions web site at https://itechsol.com.

 

Archived available anytime – Steve Will and Pete Massiello host a session on what’s new for IBM i 7.3.    

 

September 28 – November 3, 2016 – iTech Solutions Power8 & IBM i 7.3 roadshows https://itechsol.com

• IBM Power Systems Roadmap and Commitment to i
• How Organizations are running mission-critical workloads on Power8 with reduced TCO
• Understanding of IBM Power8 processors, enhancements and new features
• Discussion of IBM i 7.3 newest enhancements including: DB2,  Security, and System Management
• Reducing system downtime with High Availability and Backup options

September 19-22, 2016 – IBM Edge 2016 MGM Grand Las Vegas NV   http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/edge/

• Cool things in Navigator for IBM i to make you a Rock Star Administrator
• What you need to know to Upgrade to IBM i 7.2 & 7.3 
• Tips and Tricks to improve performance and save disk space
• Step by step guide to Creating Virtual i partitions hosted by IBM i

October 24 – 26, 2016 – COMMON Fall Event, Columbus OH  www.common.org

• What you need to know to Upgrade to IBM i 7.2 & 7.3 
• HMC, IBM i, FSP, and Firmware
• Tips and Tricks to improve performance and save disk space

December 7 – 8, 2016 – COMMON Forum – Systems Management, Orange County, CA  www.common.org

• Cool things in Navigator for IBM i to make you a Rock Star Administrator
• What you need to know to Upgrade to IBM i 7.2 & 7.3 
• HMC, IBM i, FSP, and Firmware
• Tips and Tricks to improve performance and save disk space
• Step by step guide to Creating Virtual i partitions hosted by IBM i
• Rapid Fire Admin

 

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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.

	7.3	7.2	7.1	6.1	V5R4
Cumul Pack	16085	16127	16120	15063	12094
Tech. Refresh		3	11
Grp Hipers	12	71	175	210	204
DB Group	2	13	40	33	33
Java Group	2	10	25	36	34
Print Group		3	12	31	49
Backup/Recov.	4	26	60	61	57
Blade/IXA/IXS		1	16	30	15
HTTP	3	16	41	46	36
TCP/IP		3	9	17	22
Security	5	36	60	60	33
High Availability	2	5	11	5
Hardware	2	17	28	17

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 V7R1, the ID is 16120. We can determine that it was created on the 120th day of 2016, which is April 29th, 2016. Look at your machine and this will give you a quick indication of just how far out of date in PTFs you may be.

HMCs

If you have a Hardware Management Console (HMC,) you should be running:

Model	Release	Service Pack
HMC	V8R8.5	MH01617 (must be installed from classic GUI or command line) MH01649 (must be installed from classic GUI or command line)
HMC	V8R8.4	MH01560 (must be installed from command line using UPDHMC) SP1 MH01576 (must be installed from command line using UPDHMC) MH01639 (must be installed from classic GUI or from command line)
HMC	V8R8.3	SP2 MH01584 MH01638 MH01647
HMC	V8R8.2	SP2 MH01488 MH01646
HMC (CR4 last release)	V7R7.9	SP3 MH01546 MH01587 MH01628
HMC	V7R7.8	SP1 MH01397 SP2 MH01432 MH01570
or	V7R7.7	SP3 MH01379 SP4 MH01415 MH01516
HMC C03	V7R3.5	SP4 MH01277

If we have a model listed above in the HMC column that is the highest level of firmware that model of the HMC can be upgraded to.

• Note that release 8.8.x does not support any POWER5 servers.
• Version 7.7.9 is not supported and cannot be installed on HMC models C03, C04 or CR2.
• If an HMC is used to manage any POWER7 processor based server, the HMC must be a model CR3 or later model rack-mount HMC or C05 or later desk side HMC.
• HMC V8R8.1 is supported on rack-mount models CR5, CR6, CR7 and CR8; and on desktop model C08. These listed models meet or exceed the V8R8.1 minimum memory requirement of 2GB however 4GB is recommended.
• If you want to manage a POWER8 machine, you need to be on at least HMC 8.8.1

 

If you have an Flexible Service Processor (FSP) your firmware should be:

Machine Processor	Model	Version	Notes
Power5 or 5+	520, 515, 525, 550, 570	SF240_418_382	last
Power6	940x, M15, M25, M50	EL350_172_038	last
	8203-E4A, 8204-E8A, 8204-E4A	EL350_172_038	last
	MMA, 560, 570	EM350_172_038	last
	9119-FHA	EH350_172_038	last
Power7	8231-E1B, 8202-E4B, 8231-E2B, 8205-E6B, 8233-E8B, 8236-E8C	AL730_152_035
	9117-MMB, 9179-MHB	AM780_080_040
	8231-E1C, 8202-E4C, 8205-E6C	AL740_161_042
	9117-MMC, 9179-MHC	AM770-112_032
Power7+	8231-E1D, 8202-E4D, 8231-E2D, 8205-E6D	AL770_112_032
	8408-E8D, 9109-RMD	AM770_112_032
	9117-MMD, 9179-MHD	AM780_075_040
Power8	8408-E8E, 8284-22A, 8286-41A, or 8286-42A	SV840_113_056
	9119-MHE or 9119-MME	SC840_111_056

 

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.