Resources

Big Data? BIG DEAL!

By Kurt Thomas on Tue, 08/30/2016

With the dawn of the big data era upon us, what can IBM i systems administrators expect in terms of the demands that will be placed upon them and what kind of resources will be required to cope? Find out what the managed services industry can teach us today about what the future holds for us tomorrow.

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Astronauts Rely on Checklists (and So Should You)

By Kurt Thomas on Tue, 08/30/2016

What do astronauts and IBM i admins have in common? Checklists! These seemingly simple yet effective devices serve as our external memories and deliver process consistency, but they’re not without limitations.

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Disks Busy vs. ASP Busy in Robot Monitor

By Kurt Thomas on Thu, 08/25/2016

Did you know that the Disks Busy monitor reports the average percentage across all your ASPs, not just System ASP? You could be teetering near an I/O overload and not know it! If you have multiple ASPs, use the ASP Busy monitor instead. Here’s why.

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High Availability Fail Tales (and How to Avoid Them)

By Kurt Thomas on Thu, 08/25/2016

Chasing a high availability state is a common goal for IBM i administrators and one that can be thwarted by a single issue left unattended. By sharing some of the most frequent tales of what went wrong from real-world environments, you’ll be able to avoid these same scenarios.

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Monitoring the Demands of Fast Disk

By Kurt Thomas on Wed, 08/24/2016

The IT industry is decisively moving away from traditional hard disk drives (“platters”) in favor of Flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs). It’s a welcome change; it makes much more sense to circulate only electrons instead of disks of metal with electrons on them.

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Small but MIGHTY: Controlling the *CLS Object Type

By Kurt Thomas on Wed, 08/24/2016

While the instinct for administrators and IT managers is to always hunt down a culprit – a rogue job, an inactive journal receiver, or something else – sometimes the very building blocks of a common process, or rather the specifics that define processes, can be where the trouble at hand resides.