news from itech solutions - i5/os & ibm i · 2016. 10. 3. · if you use brms, go backup, go...

March 2011 iTech Solutions because IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) didn't come with a

System Administrator.

In This Issue

Tape Management

Connecting more than yourIBM i to your UPS

Tape Compatibility

Would you like to have HighAvailability but don't have

a second machine?

Upcoming PTFs

Release levels and PTFs

Quick Links More About Us

Upcoming Events

Quick Links

Register Now

Last Month'sNewsletter

More About Us

Common ConnectArticle on V6R1

Greetings! Our hearts, prayers, and thoughts go out toall those in Japan who are suffering fromthe devastating earthquakes, tsunami, andnow nuclear issues. As the days unfold, thehuman toll is going to grow, and it is justunbearable to see the suffering on theirfaces as we watch the news. Helping othersis always good for your soul, but in timeslike these, no matter how big or small yourhelp is, I am sure it will be appreciated. Look at how quickly things changed forthose people in northern Japan. It couldhappen in an instant to any of us. As human beings, we are affected by thehuman suffering in Japan, and as ITprofessionals, there are also many lessonswe should learn from what happened. Disasters happen, and we need to beprepared for them with proper testing. There is probably no other country who ismore prepared for earthquakes than Japan. Their infrastructure takes earthquakes intoaccount: e.g., their buildings are not asrigid to actually allow them to sway, andtheir citizens practice evacuations. Nomatter how much you prepare and test,sometimes you can't account for everything.

News from iTech Solutions - i5/OS & IBM i http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs040/1101897140933/archive/11048...

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How to make yourTransition to IBM i

6.1 easier

Look at the nuclear reactors. Those aredesigned to withstand an earthquake,backup pumping stations were in place, andgenerators to power the pumping stationswere ready in case of lost power, yet theydidn't realize that the tsunami would floodtheir generators. They probably testedthose generators all the time, as well as thebackup pumps. They just never thoughtabout the water from the tsunami. This iswhat disaster recovery testing is all about. You test different scenarios, you validateyour procedures, you try to account for allsituations. In this month's newsletter, Iwant to address some of the items youshould be thinking about. We have packed a lot of information intothis newsletter, and I hope that you findthis useful. This issue of our newsletterhas six articles. In the first, I want tocontinue our series on backups withfocusing on your tapes. The second article ison connecting your UPS more than just IBMi. The third article is on tape compatibility. The fourth article asks "Would you like tohave High Availability but don't have asecond machine?" The fifth article listssome of the upcoming events in which iTechSolutions will be participating. The lastarticle is for your reference with updatedPTF information. Of course, if you are still on V5R4, sendPete an email and he can help you upgradeto V6R1 or V7R1, with over 300 V6R1upgrades done to date you know iTechSolutions has the expertise and know how.

iTech Solutions can help you improve


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performance, 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 skills tohelp you get the most out of your System i.

For more information on any of the articlesbelow please visit us at on the web at iTechSolutions or email iTech Solutions. Wewould love for you to let us know any articlesthat you wish for the future, or if you enjoyany of the articles in the current newsletters.

Tape Management.

In last month's newsletter, I discussed tapemanagement, but in light of everything that


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has happened recently I want toreemphasize this. No matter how good yourbackups are, if you don't properly handleyour tapes, there won't be a tape you cancount on for restoring. I want to make surethat point is well understood. No matterwhat your backup methodology is, nomatter how much or how little you backupeach night, no matter what type of tapedrives, encryption or no encryption, if youdon't have the tape when it is time torestore, you are not going to be able torestore!

So, I want you to answer a few questions,because your job will depend on the answerif you ever have to rely on those tapes forrecovery. Where are your tapes? How canthey be identified? How far are they fromyour computer? Who else knows where theyare stored and how to retrieve them in arecovery situation? Please don't think youhave to answer to us, you need to answer toyourself. Can you sleep at night knowingthat the tapes that backup your company'scomputers are safe, secure, retrievable, andthen usable? If the answer to any of thoseis no, stop what you are doing and fix this.

You might think I am being a little directand pushy, but I am trying to make surethat in a recovery you can use your backupmedia to recover your system. I am at adifferent customer almost every day, and Ican tell you that most of them don't movetheir tapes off-site. This is one of thebiggest problems we see today. I don't careif you use BRMS, GO Backup, GO SAVE 21each night, or have written your ownbackup procedures. If the tapes stay in thecomputer room, if the tapes stay in the tape


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drive, if the tapes aren't moved off-site, thenyour backups for disaster recovery areuseless. I am not going to sugar coat this: ifyou aren't getting your tapes off-site eachnight, we are going to grade you an "F" forbackups when we do an iTech SolutionsHealth Check.

Today so much of our information is storedelectronically, how can a company functionand carry on without their computers? Thekey to recovery is properly planningbackups, doing them regularly, movingbackup tapes off-site, and then performing arecovery test. If you do a special backupright before your Disaster Recovery test,then you really haven't tested your DR. Youneed to be testing your DR with a regularset of tapes. When was the last time thatyou performed a DR test? Did you haveobjectives for the test established beforeyour test? Did you meet those objectives? Ifyou have never done a test of your recovery,then you have no idea if you are able torecover your system from your currentbackup methodology. Don't wait for a realdisaster to happen when it is too late.Contact iTech Solutions, and schedule a DRtest. We can bring a machine to you fortesting, or you can come to our location withyour tapes for testing, or we can do itremotely, but you must schedule a DR testbefore an event happens when you areforced to recover. I can tell you that of allthe customers who have come to us to testtheir recovery, most can't recover everythingthe first time. We then work with thecustomer and their backups makingrecommendations on what they should bedoing with their backups, they make thechanges we recommend, and then they areable to successfully recover the second time.


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Accidents happen. As SystemAdministrators we are tasked with beingkeepers of the data. We don't own it, wedon't control it, we shouldn't update it, butwe need to take care of the data. Your jobdoesn't stop with the backup, it starts withthe backup.

If you are interested in an iTech SolutionsHealth Check, or in scheduling a test of yourrecovery using your backups, please send anemail to Pete. You won't know how good yourbackup is until you have to recover it. Don'twait until it's too late. Test your recoverybefore you need to rely on it for a realrecovery.

Connecting your UPS to more thanjust your IBM i.

I know you have your Power SystemsIBM i (AS/400, iSeries) plugged intoyour UPS, and you have the signal cablefrom the UPS to your machine so thatthe UPS can signal your machine whenthe utility power is lost. Furthermore, Iknow you have a program on yourmachine to handle and process the UPSsignals to bring the machine downgracefully when utility power is lost fora specified duration. Chances are youdon't have all of the above; in fact Iwould bet that only 10% of the peoplereading this newsletter have everything


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above. If you are unsure, pleasecontact John about a review. Mostcustomers we run into either don't havethe cable connected, or don't have aUPS Monitoring program to manage thesignals that the UPS sends. I wouldhighly recommend you get the aboveworking first and foremost, and we canhelp you with this if you are unsure.

The above is just the basics. So whatelse is there? Well there is a lot morethat needs to be connected to your UPS. Let me explain. If your machine'sconsole is either the HMC or OperationsConsole, then those two devices (andtheir monitors) must also be on yourUPS. Otherwise how will you shut yourmachine down or connect to it tomanage it during a power outage? Lastweek, I received a call from a customerwho asked, "How do I turn my AS/400off?" I had to ask, "Why?", and he said,"Well all the power in the industrialpark is off, and we want to shut themachine down because we don't havethe UPS cable connected." I said tothem, "The same way you wouldnormally do it. Just sign onto the PCthat runs Operations Console in thecomputer room...." The customerinterrupted me and said, "We took thatoff the UPS because the UPS wasbeeping as the batteries were gettingold and couldn't handle everything onthe UPS." I don't need to continue, asyou see what happened already. Theirconsole wasn't plugged into the UPSany longer so they couldn't managetheir machine. Not a good scenario. Inaddition, if you are using OperationsConsole through your routers, you needto make sure that all your routers are


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also on a UPS. I know, there are a lot ofthings to think about, but this is thekind of review you need to complete toinsure you are still able to connect toand manage your machine when youlose power.

If you are unsure, and would like averification, contact John via email andrequest an iTech Solutions HealthCheck.

Tape compatibility.

What do you do when you have old tapes inone format, but your new machine comes inwith a different media type or incompatiblemedia? We see this happening more andmore as customers on older machines aretrading them in for new Power7 machineswith LTO4 tape technology. Some of thosecustomer's older machines had ¼ inch QIC orpossible LTO1 tape drives. LTO4 drives canread and write LTO4 and LTO3 tapes, but canonly read LTO2. It can't read LTO1. This iscausing a problem with either old tapearchives, or even duringconversions/migrations from the old to the


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new machine. iTech Solutions has loaner tapedrives that we provide our customers during anew machine installation so to make themigration easier. During a recent migrationfrom a 270 to a new Power7 machine, wewere able to install one of our LTO3 tapedrives in the customers old machine (270),and do their final backup on media that couldbe read in the new machine, but the lastbackup was run in less than 20% of the time ittook to run the backup on the customer'soriginal media in the old machine. Thisgreatly reduced their outage window duringthe migration from their old machine to theirnew machine. In addition, iTech Solutionshas many different types of tapes and formatsand can convert tapes from one media toanother. If you find yourself with a tape forwhich you no longer have the tape drive, giveus a call and get the tape converted.

Would you like to haveHigh Availability(replication) but don't havea second machine?

Replicate

Having good backups isn't highavailability. It's a necessary practice, but


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backups require you to restore your system. Don't forget to understand how long it willtake to restore your system, plus the time toget another system. In addition, yourrecovery will only be up to your lastbackup. What happens to all thetransactions you entered since your lastbackup? If you backup your entire systemevery morning at 2:00am, but the systemcrashes at 4:00pm the next afternoon, allthe transactions during the 14 hour intervalwould be lost. High Availability softwareallows you to replicate transactions as theyare entered on your current machine (knownas the source machine) using remotejournaling to another machine, (known asthe target machine) upon which they areread from the journal and "played back" toupdate the files/objects on this targetmachine. So when a user updates a file onthe source machine with your applicationsoftware, the high availability software willthen modify the same file on the targetsystem with that same update.

Of course to do this you need a remotesystem and high availability software. Ihave seen some customers who have twosystems in the same computer room and areusing high availability software. This isn'ttrue high availability, since there is at leasta single point of failure (everything is in onemachine room). That second system (thetarget system) needs to be in a differentlocation. What happens if you don't have asecond location or a second machine? iTechSolutions offers a virtualized recoveryoptions for the IBM i (AS/400, iSeries)offering the benefits of second machine at aremote location with rapid recovery forbusiness continuity at a price point thatevery business can afford. This virtualized


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server can be managed by your staff, or itcan be managed by our staff. To protect your company and your data,partner with iTech Solutions. We canprovide your business with: A cost-effective high availability solution foryour most critical systems.

An end-to-end solution which replicatesyour data real-time to an off-site datacenter.A solution which is managed by us orby you.Industry-leading technologies to createand maintain a mirror of your systemsin our data center.One of our IBM i servers for hosting, oryou can choose to host on your machineat our site.A production environment in case offailure on your primary system: if yourprimary machine is unavailable byaccident or for a planned outage, yourtarget machine at iTech Solutionsbecomes your production environmentand ensures the availability of yoursystems and data.

It has been shown that over 80% of thecustomers that lose their machines go out ofbusiness within two years after the machinefailure. Don't let this happen to you. Teamup with iTech Solutions and save yourbusiness. Contact Pete for moreinformation and details.

Upcoming Events.


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Join us at the Northeast User GroupConference for IBM i on April 12 & 13in Framingham, MA.We will be in booth 23. Stop by andfind out how iTech Solutions canhelp you solve all your IBM iproblems.

Pete Massiello will also be presentingthe following sessions at NEUGC:

Getting Started with IBM Systems DirectorNavigatorSystems Management RoundtableUnderstanding the HMC, FSP, IBM i, andFirmware.Virtual i Partitions Hosted by IBM iWhat you need to know to upgrade your IBM ito 6.1 & 7.1.

May 18th iTech Solutions will be atLISUG in Woodbury, NY. Please stopby and visit us to discuss your needsand requirements, and how iTechSolutions can help you.

Pete Massiello will be presenting inMinneapolis, MN at the Annual


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COMMON conference May 1st to May4th the following sessions:

Getting Started with IBM SystemsDirector Navigator.Performance fundamentals: Tipsand Techniques.Understanding the HMC, FSP, IBMi, and Firmware.Virtual i Partitions Hosted by IBMi.What you need to know toupgrade your IBM i to 6.1 & 7.1.

Release levels and PTFs People are always asking mehow often they should beperforming PTF maintenance,and when is the right time to upgrade theiroperating system. I updated this article fromlast month with the current levels of PTFs.Let's look at PTFs. First, PTFs are ProgramTemporary Fixes that are created by IBM tofix a problem that has occurred or to possiblyprevent a problem from occurring. Inaddition, some times PTFs add newfunctionality, security, or improveperformance. Therefore, I am alwaysdumbfounded as to why customers do not


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perform PTF maintenance on their machine atleast quarterly. If IBM has come out with afix for your disk drives, why do you want towait for your disk drive to fail with thatproblem, only to be told that there is a fix forthat problem, and if you had applied the PTFbeforehand, you would have averted theproblem. Therefore, I think a quarterly PTFmaintenance strategy is a smart move. Manyof our customers are on our quarterly PTFmaintenance program, and that providesthem with the peace of mind of knowing theirsystem is up to date on PTFs. Below is a tableof the major group PTFs for the last fewreleases. This is what we are installing forour customers on iTech Solutions QuarterlyMaintenance program.

Releases 7.1 6.1 V5R4 V5R3 Cumul. Pack 10229 10215 10292 8267 Tech. Refresh 1

Grp Hipers 26 84 147 169 DB Group 5 19 30 24 Java Group 5 15 26 23 Print Group 2 20 43 20 Backup/Recov. 7 21 39 33 Security Group 4 19 15 7 Blade/IXA/IXS 4 18 14 - Http 5 16 25 17

TCP/IP 2 11 18 16

The easiest way to check your levels is to


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issue the command WRKPTFGRP. They shouldall have a status of installed, and you shouldbe up to the latest for all the above, basedupon your release. Now there are moregroups than the ones listed above, but theseare the general ones that most peoplerequire. We can help you know which groupPTFs you should be installing on your machinebased upon your licensed programs. Here is anice tidbit. The Cumulative PTF packagenumber is broken down as YDDD, where Y isthe year and DDD is the day it was released. Therefore, if we look at the cumulativepackage for V5R4, the ID is 9104. We candetermine that it was created on the104th day of 2009, which is April 14, 2009. Look at your machine and this will give you aquick indication of just how far out of date inPTFs you may be. I left V5R1 off the list,because if you are on V5R1, you don't need tobe worrying about PTFs, you really need to beupgrading your operating system. The samecan be said for V5R2 and V5R3, but there arestill customers who are on those releases.

If you have an HMC, you should berunning V7R7.2M0 with Service Pack 1. If yourHMC is a C03, then it should stay at V7R3.5SP2.

For your Flexible Service Processor (FSP) thatis inside your Power 5 or Power5+ (520, 515,525, 550, 570), the code level of the FSPshould be 01_SF240_403. Power 6 (940x M15,M25, & M50 machines, and 8203-E4A &8204-E4A) customers should be runningEL350_085. For Power6 (MMA, 560, and 570machines) your FSP should be at EM350_085.


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If you have a Power6 595 (9119-FMA) thenyou should be on EH350_085. POWER7 thefirmware level is AL720_082 or AM720_064depending on your model. If you need help with upgrading your HMC orFSP just give us a call. We will be happy toperform the function for you or assist you indoing it. Contact Pete Massiello.

We have the skills to help you get the mostout of your IBM i. For more information onany of the articles please contact us [email protected] . We would also like toknow what you think of this newsletter andany items you would like us to discuss infuture issues. Our staff of Certified i5/OS professionals canhelp 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 MassielloiTech Solutions

www.itechsol.com


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