Month: March 2023

​This newsletter includes:

Free Licensed Programs You May Want to Check Out
Do I Have Defective PTF’s On My System? Are My PTF’s Current? Let QMGTOOLS Give You the Answers!
Save the Date! iAdmin Spring 2023
iTech iTip Videos
Sips & Tricks: Coffee with iTech
iBasics: IBM i Education for the Beginner System Administrator
iPOWER Hour Episode 44: Our System Admin is Retiring. Now What?
Upcoming Events
IBM i, FSP, and HMC release levels and PTFs (March 2023)

March Madness is certainly going on here at iTech Solutions, a Service Express company.  Let me tell you what I mean by that. First, we have had a record number of POWER 10 systems and SAN Storage happen this month as well as last. In fact, even into April, we are pretty well scheduled.  We have our team all over the US installing new Power Systems and SANs.  I can see it just by looking at our teams’ calendars, but also in all our project plans we do with each customer during the installation process.  Depending on the configuration, options, number of partitions, etc that checklist can be anywhere from 100 to 300 steps for an installation. Each installation has its own unique project plan.  So, it’s not just the installers, it’s the project managers and the rest of the technical team

As I said in February I spoke at my first in-person user group meeting in February at LISUG and we had the Service Express Annual Sales Conference last week in Florida. OMG, it was great to see so many team members, have face-to-face conversations, and just be back to as close to what normal used to be. We were also in Wisconsin for the WMCPA conference in March, then we have COMMON in Denver April 24 – 28,  and the Northeast User Groups (NEUGC) May 8-10 in Westborough, MA.  I know the entire team is excited to talk and meet everyone at these conferences.
For a list of sessions that Yvonne Enselman, Nilo Kahn, Pete Massiello, and Steven McIver, are presenting at COMMON PowerUp 2023 in Denver:

Nilofur Khan: What Are Soft Skills, and Why They Are Important?
Pete Massiello: What You Need to Know to Successfully Upgrade to IBM i 7.4 and 7.5, HMCm IBM i , FSP, & Firmware Putting All the Pieces Together, Installing and Configuring NVMe, Cool Things in Navigator to Be a Rockstar System Administrator

…
The post March 2023 Newsletter first appeared on iTech Solutions Group. Read More 

​The reality is that most small to midsized businesses, especially those running applications on IBM i, just need a simple solution that works.
An API server can put those resources to use and easily handle the average workload. Read More 

​Back when IBM i 7.5 was announced, IBM also announced several licensed programs that no longer cost any money to get a license for. Out of this list of programs there are two that stand out:  DB2 Symmetrical Multiprocessing and Advanced Job Scheduler. Let’s take a few minutes to see if you should consider trying either of these solutions.
DB2 Symmetrical Multiprocessing (we’ll call it SMP for short) has often been used as a possible solution to processing bottlenecks before paying to unlock an extra processor core for IBM i, which is quite expensive. To really take advantage of SMP, you must first have two or more processors licensed for IBM i on your system. After installing SMP on your systems, you can manually run queriers and tell them to use SMP parallel, or you can simply modify the QQRYDEGREE system value and give it a value of *OPTIMIZE to let the operating system determine the right times to enable it. Try running some long running queries with SMP parallel off and on to compare times and see if there is a time savings.
Advanced Job Scheduler is a separate solution from the native job scheduler on IBM i. As the name implies, it gives you advanced features for scheduling that you do not get in the native one. Here are three things I like about the advanced job scheduler that might be useful for you:

Calendars: If you have an end-of-month that is never on the same day each month, you can create a Calendar and place each of the end-of-month dates on it for the year. Then, you can tell your end-of-month job to run based on what your Calendar says.
Sequences: Maybe you want several commands to run in sequence at the time you’ve specified the job to run. You can line up a multitude of commands to one right after the other instead of having to schedule multiple entries or create a program.
Job History: Would you like to go back and see the last several weeks that a job has run to see if it’s been running normally or been ending abnormally or been running at all? AJS lets you quickly see that in the history log it keeps for each scheduled entry.

Both solutions sound great, right? The best way to obtain these licensed programs is to contact your IBM Business Partner and …
The post Free Licensed Programs You May Want to Check Out first appeared on iTech Solutions Group. Read More 

​By now you should be familiar with IBM’s awesome free toolbox, QMGTOOLS. If you are not familiar with QMGTOOLS, I recommend you read this excellent article written by my colleague at iTech, Marc Vadeboncoeur.
For today’s article, I am going to focus on Option 24 of QMGTOOLS – “PTF Menu”
To get to this menu, simply add QMGTOOLS to your library list, and then enter “Go MG”

Choosing option 24 brings you to the PTF Menu, and this is where you can find some important information about the PTF’s on your system.

Option 1 “Compare group PTFs from IBM” will compare the Group PTF’s on your system, against IBM’s database of current Group PTF levels for your OS Version and Release. When the compare has been completed, you will see a message at the bottom of the screen saying “Spoolfile created with results…”

The spoolfile generated is called QSYSPRT and will be under the user profile you used to run the compare. Displaying the Spool File will show the current Group PTF levels from IBM’s website and the status of those levels on your system. (Not Found, Back Level, Installed or Related Group)

Paging down on the Spool File will then show a comparison of the Group PTF levels on your system against the current Group PTF levels from the IBM website.

Next, choosing Option 2 “Compare HIPER PTF’s from IBM” will generate another spool file, also called QSYSPRT. Displaying this spool file will show a list of HIPER PTF’s not found on your system.

Next, choosing Option 3, “Compare DEFECTIVE PTFs from IBM” will compare the list of defective PTFs on your system against the list of PTFs that superseded them on IBM’s website. This process will once again create a spool file under your user profile called QSYSPRT. This will show the defective PTF’s found on your system that have not been superseded.

These 3 Options under the PTF Menu of QMGTOOLS do a really nice job of giving you a quick and easy overview of your current PTF status. I strongly urge you to take advantage of these quarterly.
One last note, whenever you open QMGTOOLS, please first choose Option 13 – “Check IBM for updated QMGTOOLS” as this will make sure you have all the latest functionalities and updates for the tool.

Keeping your PTF’s current is the best insurance against system problems down the road!…
The post Do I Have Defective PTF’s On My System? first appeared on iTech Solutions Group. Read More 

​Time is running out to catch the early bird savings at NEUGC 2023 in Westborough, MA.Register by March 31, 2023 with promo code EARLYBIRD. neugc.org has everything you need to know about the event – costs, hotel registration info, speakers, sessions, and more. pic.twitter.com/S4jh6NbSYc- NEUGC (@NEUGC)11:10 – Mar 28, 2023 Read More