IBM POWER9 and IBM POWER8 technology-based systems deliver hardware enhancements
Hardware enhancements are available for the IBM® POWER8® and IBM POWER9™ scale-out and scale-up family of servers, including:
• A new generation of enterprise 2.5-inch solid-state drives (SSD) that provides enhancements in the 387 GB, 775 GB, and 1550 GB capacity point for IBM Power® System E980, E950, L922, S914, S922, S924, H922, H924, S812L, S822L, S824L, S814, S812, S822, S824, E870, E870C, E880, E880C, E850, and E850C servers.
• PCIe3 x8 SSD NVMe adapters for IBM i operating system, providing 1.6 TB, 3.2 TB, and 6.4 TB capacity points for Power E980, S914, S924, and H924 servers.
• The Power S924 server delivers a new feature for 11-core or 22-core typical 3.45 - 3.9 GHz (max) configurations in a 19-inch rack-mount, 4U (EIA units) drawer configuration. All the cores are active.
https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/9/897/ENUS119-059/index.html&lang=en&request_locale=en
IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh 7 enhances the IBM i portfolio of products
IBM® i, the integrated operating environment that runs on IBM Power® Systems with a reputation for robust architecture, exceptional security, and business resilience, is enhanced. IBM i 7.3 Technology Refresh (TR) 7 for the IBM i portfolio of products offers clients new features and enhancements across many of the components, such as:
• The Integrated Web Server (IWS) environment can now be deployed in a user-specified subsystem, giving users better control and management of system resources. The IWS has also improved the programmatic deployment functionality.
• Cluster administrative domain has increased usability of key functions, such as support to replicate an encrypted password, and allows changes to the synchronization option on inactive nodes.
• IBM Db2® for i includes new and improved SQL capabilities with attributes that are valued by business computing solutions.
• IBM PowerHA® SystemMirror® for i brings several enhancements to the PowerHA portfolio, including: •Improvements to the administrative domain, such as support for replicating user-profile passwords that have been set with the QSYSUPWD API
•Integrated and streamlined recovery from a data center outage in a HyperSwap® with a LUN-level switching environment that enables HyperSwap protection to be restored with a single command
• IBM Backup, Recovery, and Media Services for i (BRMS) provides virtual tape image catalog and backup administration improvements.
•The RPG language of IBM Rational® Development Studio for i (RDS) includes overloading for procedure calls. RPG now has a framework to generate many other data languages, such as XML, JSON, YAML, and HTML from RPG data structures, that help enhance programmer productivity.
• IBM Rational Developer for i (RDi) includes refactoring functionality and improved indexing and searching within the preferences support.
• IBM i Access Client Solutions (ACS) schema support provides better search and find capabilities. Additionally, "Run SQL Scripts" has been enhanced with many updates, including content assist, integrated save-as favorites, timestamps showing query execution times, and more.
•With new open source enhancements, popular technologies for messaging between application components, storing data, and so on are easily available in RPM form.
•A new generation of enterprise 2.5-inch solid-state drives (SSD) improves enterprise-class reliability, endurance, and capacity characteristics.
• IBM i supports the new processor feature for 11-core or 22-core configurations of the IBM Power System S924 server, which provides additional choices for the scale-out market.
• SR-IOV logical ports can be assigned to IBM i LPARs that are configured with restricted I/O. This allows high-speed, low-latency network adapter usage while still being able to use Live Partition Mobility.
•License keys can be added to an IBM i LPAR through the HMC or Novalink interface. This saves time for administrators because they no longer need to sign in to each individual LPAR when additional keys are required. Managers of multitenancy environments with multiple servers will find this especially helpful, as will those migrating to a new server.
https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/9/897/ENUS219-489/index.html&lang=en&request_locale=en
IBM i 7.4 Technology Refresh 1 enhances the IBM i portfolio of products
IBM® i, the integrated operating environment that runs on IBM Power® Systems with a reputation for robust architecture, exceptional security, and business resilience, is enhanced. IBM i 7.4 Technology Refresh (TR) 1 for the IBM i portfolio of products offers clients new features and enhancements across many of the components, such as:
• The Integrated Web Server (IWS) environment can now be deployed in a user-specified subsystem, giving users better control and management of system resources. The IWS has also improved the programmatic deployment functionality.
• The Digital Certificate Manager (DCM) has added a new GUI that simplifies and improves certificate management on IBM i.
• IBM i System Transport Layer Security (TLS) is enhanced to comply with emerging industry standards for TLSv1.3 and improve support for TLSv1.2.
•Cluster administrative domain has increased the monitored resource entries (MREs) limit. This allows room for cluster growth and increases usability of key functions, such as support to replicate an encrypted password. It also enables changes to the synchronization option on inactive nodes and adds a new format to the Retrieve Monitored Resource Information (QfpadRtvMonitoredResourceInfo) API to provide sorting, subsetting, and a continuation option.
• IBM Db2® for i includes new and improved SQL capabilities with attributes that are valued by business computing solutions.
• IBM Db2 Mirror for i has new capabilities, such as the initial version of the application evaluation support tool and support for Live Partition Mobility and the S922.
• IBM PowerHA® SystemMirror® for i brings several enhancements to the PowerHA portfolio, including: •Improvements to the administrative domain, such as support for replicating user-profile passwords that have been set with the QSYSUPWD API
• Increased capacity of the administrative domain with support for synchronizing up to 200,000 monitored resources
• Faster and easier management of the administrative domain so users can easily sort and filter monitored resources with the WRKCADMRE command
• Simplified setup and implementation of the administrative domain with a streamlined way to easily find and add many resources using a single command
• Integrated and streamlined recovery from a data center outage in a HyperSwap® with a LUN-level switching environment that enables HyperSwap protection to be restored with a single command
• IBM Backup, Recovery, and Media Services for i (BRMS) provides virtual tape image catalog and backup administration improvements.
•The RPG language of IBM Rational® Development Studio for i (RDS) includes overloading for procedure calls. RPG now has a framework to generate many other data languages, such as XML, JSON, YAML, and HTML from RPG data structures, that help enhance programmer productivity.
• IBM Rational Developer for i (RDi) includes refactoring functionality and improved indexing and searching within the preferences support.
• IBM i Access Client Solutions (ACS) schema support provides better search and find capabilities. Additionally, "Run SQL Scripts" has been enhanced with many updates, including content assist, integrated save-as favorites, timestamps showing query execution times, and more.
•With new open source enhancements, popular technologies for messaging between application components, storing data, and so on are easily available in RPM form.
•A new generation of enterprise 2.5-inch solid-state drives (SSD) improves enterprise-class reliability, endurance, and capacity characteristics.
• IBM i 7.4 TR1 supports PCIe3 x8 SSD NVMe adapters that provide multiple capacity points for enterprise workloads on selected Power servers with POWER9™ technology. Support is for selected dedicated and VIOS VSCSI attached NVMe devices. This low-latency alternative to dedicated SAS storage fulfills the Statement of Direction from the April 24, 2019, IBM i 7.4 announcement.
• IBM i supports the new processor feature for 11-core or 22-core configurations of the IBM Power System S924 server, which provides additional choices for the scale-out market.
• SR-IOV logical ports can be assigned to IBM i LPARs that are configured with restricted I/O. This allows high-speed, low-latency network adapter usage while still being able to use Live Partition Mobility. This new support also enables the use of RoCE for IBM i on the IBM Power System S922 server.
Note: RoCE is required for the IBM Db2 Mirror for i product.
• License keys can be added to an IBM i LPAR through the HMC or Novalink interface. This saves time for administrators because they no longer need to sign in to each individual LPAR when additional keys are required. Managers of multitenancy environments with multiple servers will find this especially helpful, as will those migrating to a new server.
https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/2/897/ENUS219-492/index.html&lang=en&request_locale=en
Thank You
_____
Paul Steinmetz
IBM i Systems Administrator
Pencor Services, Inc.
462 Delaware Ave
Palmerton Pa 18071
610-826-9117 work
610-826-9188 fax
610-349-0913 cell
610-377-6012 home
psteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx
http://www.pencor.com/
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