Glad to have you back for this week's IBM i Pulse! Each week we'll take a deeper look at the latest IBM i and Profound Logic news. This week we are discussing the risks of going off IBM hardware support and highlighting the user profile attributes you should focus on.
From Our Experts:
- Ted Holt's recent article for IT Jungle helps with Dealing with RPG Errors and Embedded SQL.
Profound Logic News:
- Profound Logic and IBM Systems partnered together for a webinar on Adding Professional Services for Sure-Fire Project Success.
Educational Resources:
- Learn how to integrate your browser screen with other PC applications with Profound UI PC Command Listener.
- Your IBM i Development is Made Easy with GIT and Profound.js in this video.
- Discover how easy it is to Deploy Applications to Your Own Server from NodeRun.
- Get a look at our Guided Lab: Part 2 on creating an Employee Data Application in NodeRun.
Product News:
- Profound UI Version 6 has a new Fix Pack 2.6 that is available now!
Industry News:
Going Off IBM Hardware Maintenance A Risky Move by Alex Woodie
Businesses that are running on older Power Systems servers have some major decisions to make this year. As of March 31st, IBM has stopped offering hardware support for Power 6 servers and support for Power 7 servers will end on September 30th. So what are these businesses to do? Some will choose to support themselves instead of upgrading to the newer machines, but that decision comes with inherent risks.
Most (if not all) IBM i customers have their hardware and software supported with IBM which provides a three-year support agreement with each machine purchased. This leads most businesses to simply upgrade their hardware before the three-year agreement is up. But a growing number of businesses are trending away from that model and are going off hardware maintenance according to Bob Losey, the CEO of Source Data.
“I was struck this month by the high number of legacy server failures without support that involved my clients. In one case just last week, one of my clients had a cascading failure. First, the disk unit failed. Within two days after the disk repair, the server would freeze up. Diagnostics revealed firmware error . . . not hardware error. This server not only lacked hardware support for two years, but it also lacked software support which is the source for firmware.”
What Are the IBM i User Profile Attributes That Really Matter? by Carol Woodbury
Most of you know that when you prompt the Create or Change User Profile commands, you will see five full pages of possible user profile attributes that can be specified for your user profile. You might be thinking, do you have to specify all of them? Do some parameters have a higher value than others? A user profile object is what defines you as the user to IBM i. When you create/change use profiles you can do much more than define your password, security capabilities, and group assignments. Below, Carol gives you a list of the top profile attributes you should be paying attention to for your user profile. Some of those attributes include:
- Password Attributes
- User Class and Special Attributes
- Group Profile and Supplemental Groups
- Limited Capability
- Initial Program, Initial Menu, and Attention Program
- Text Description
Read all about attributes here
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