This article examines some of the most popular IBM VTL (virtual tap library) solutions for IBM i and other platforms. You'll also learn what to consider to determine if VTL is right for you.

You’ve heard about IASP technology many times over the years, but you’ve been ignoring it, haven’t you? Steve Finnes confirms that it’s past time we “get to know it, understand it, and not be afraid of it.”

You need a backup strategy to test your company’s disaster recovery plan and, despite its reputation for reliability, administrators still need to back up their IBM i. A sound backup strategy should also restore individual user objects to account for human error.

Let’s face it; system administration remains a largely thankless task. From scheduling jobs to balancing workloads to answering messages in QSYSOPR, administrators and operators work diligently behind the scenes to ensure that IBM i servers are available to run mission-critical applications.

Protect your data and your company from internal and external threats by ensuring that your security policies on-premises and in the cloud are aligned with this checklist.

“Some cloud vendors tout that systems deployed within their framework require little or no administration: You create an image with the software and applications that you want it to provide services for, spin it up in a management console, and Voila! you have an entirely new system online; with minimal cost, no hassle, little work. However, even with newer models for virtualization appearing on...

System admins need root level authority at all times, system operations staff needs periodic database and application account authority, and security admins needing to protect the environment are some of the few of the challenges of managing privilege in the enterprise server infrastructure. Read this article to learn more about Sudo alternatives.

THE UNSOLVED PROBLEM Secure, private, effective use of computers by a company (including hosted, cloud and other services as well as the company’s own systems) relies on managing access privileges. The problem isn’t unique to computers. Office buildings, hotels, apartments and college dorms, for example, typically have “master keys” (or smart ID badges) that can open many-toall of the locks in the...

According to a recent KPMG report, four-fifths of executives at healthcare providers and payers say their information technology has been compromised by cyberattacks. That same report presents how the increased risk to healthcare organizations relates to the richness and uniqueness of the information that health plans, doctors and hospitals handle. Apart from typical financial fraud, there is also...

THE WORLD OF COMPLIANCE At the official start of summertime 2016 in Britain we are starting to consume the labour of last autumn, five gallons of alcoholic homemade cider (yum!) made from eight apple varieties grown in mine and my neighbors’ gardens. I’m very VERY careful sterilizing glassware, containers, and buckets: there was this unfortunate incident three years ago (no, you don’t want to hear...

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY I was at the Red Hat Summit in Boston at the end of June. We had a lot of activity at our exhibitor stand, and a lot of discussions being passed on to me by our sales team I continued to have the same conversation again and again over the three days. This seems to be the year people have finished bedding down Puppet in their server/VM infrastructure, and are looking...

Backup and recovery processes are among the unsung heroes of data center operations. Though end results may not be readily apparent on an everyday basis, natural and digital disasters have a way of humbling companies that do not take this risk management discipline seriously.