29
Fri, Nov
0 New Articles
  1. You are here:  
  2. Home
  3. MORE
  4. Commentary
  5. Analysis of News Events
  6. In the Wheelhouse: IBM i Access Client Solutions, Where Have You Been All My Life?

In the Wheelhouse: IBM i Access Client Solutions, Where Have You Been All My Life?

Analysis of News Events
Typography
  • Smaller Small Medium Big Bigger
  • Default Helvetica Segoe Georgia Times

 

This week, I'll talk about the brand spanking new and overly awesome IBM i client offering and give you a lesson in risk management from Amazon's recent outage.

 

IBM Releases Technology Preview of IBM i Access Client Solutions

 

IBM released its technology preview of IBM i Access Client Solutions last week. If you remember, I wrote a little teaser about it a few weeks ago. Not much has been written about it yet, so I'm going to break it down for you. If you're maintaining IBM i Access for Windows installations, then keep reading. You're going to like this.

IBM i Access Client Solutions is a lightweight Java-based client that bundles some of the most-often-used components of the much bulkier IBM i Access for Windows into a nice little package.

Here's the full feature list from the accompanying Getting Started document:

  • A full-featured 5250 display emulator based on IBM Rational Host-on-Demand. In addition to all the 5250 display features you are accustomed to when using IBM i Access for Windows, you may now switch your 5250 display emulator between languages without rebooting your workstation. In addition, you may have multiple concurrent sessions with different host code pages. This allows separate languages to be displayed within different emulator sessions.
  • Printer emulation is also supported.
  • A 5250 Session Manager modeled after IBM Personal Communications Session Manager, which can be used for managing all of your 5250 emulator sessions
  • Data Transfer, which provides the ability to transfer data from/to your IBM i database to/from various file types on your workstation such as OpenDocument spreadsheet
  • OpenDocument (*.ods), Excel Workbook (*.xlsx), and other file formats
  • Virtual Control Panel with a graphical interface to the IBM i operation panel
  • 5250 emulation for LAN Console
  • Consolidation for hardware management interface configurations, including ASMI, IVM, and HMC
  • Launch capability to IBM Navigator for i using your default browser

Here are a couple of technical tidbits you should know:

  • While it's supported to connect to servers running IBM i 5.4 and above, you need to connect to servers running IBM i 6.1 or 7.1 in order to take advantage of the 5250 LAN Console, Navigator for i, and the Virtual Control Panel.
  • You will need to have a couple of PTFs installed if you're using LAN Console or the Virtual Control Panel. If connecting to IBM i 6.1, you'll need PTFs MF55543 and MF55549, or if you're at machine code 6.1.1, you'll need MF55540 and MF55547. If connecting to IBM i 7.1, you'll need PTFs MF55485 and MF55538.
  • IBM i Access Client Solutions uses the same host servers that IBM i Access for Windows uses. You will also need the IBM i Access Family license.
  • You can import 5250 Workstation Profiles (.ws), but importing Keyboard Mapping Files (.kmp) is not supported.

With that out of the way, there are a few awesome things about this product.

  • First, since it's written in Java, it's deployable to Mac, Linux, and Windows. Being a fan of the MochaSoft products for a few years, especially for mobile, I'm happy to know that IBM now offers a platform-polytheistic client emulator. Mac and Linux fans will appreciate this.
  • Second, it has a very small footprint, and the installation is very fast and easy. The whole thing is only about 48 MB. This means you can load and go in only just a few minutes. You can install it on a local machine or even a remote shared drive—in any directory where a user has read/write authority. Why is this awesome? Well, have you ever had to deploy IBM i Access for Windows for a few hundred people? There are ways to install and update it en masse, but it's time-consuming and a little painful to configure/maintain. And all those big images being pushed across your network and sucking up your bandwidth? No thanks. Or maybe you have to run around with a physical CD image? It still happens, although nobody likes to admit it. I can put IBM i Access Client Solutions on a network drive and just deploy a shortcut to a startup script file to all users. Maybe I'd deploy it from a Web server via Java Web Start. Plus, if I have to update the source installation, I do that task just once. Brilliant! Just imagine the time savings!
  • Third, in the future, you will be able to create customized packages with certain features removed. For example, you could cut the features and only give users 5250 and printer emulation.

This is a fantastic little product. I'm personally migrating our users to something more manageable. IBM i Access for Web may be the widespread route I go, as I'm growing very partial to WebSphere and want to promote access to IBM i via the Web with iPad (no Java on iPad), but for many shops IBM i Access Client Solutions may be the low-maintenance solution you've been waiting for.

Please download the technology preview for IBM i Access Client Solutions. I'd love to know what you think about it and to continue to generate a buzz, so hit me up on Twitter to talk about it. IBM hit the nail on the head with this one, and I want to make sure they get some positive feedback.

What I Will Learn from the Amazon Outage

On the weekend of June 29, a major storm knocked out power to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center in Virginia, causing an hours-long outage for some high-profile customers—notably, Netflix, Pinterest, and Instagram. There are lessons to be learned for us all, regardless of whether we leverage cloud-based services.

Just to be clear: this not an anti-cloud article. I'm a cloud advocate if it fits your business and you and your vendor cross the t's and dot the i's. If people are pointing their fingers at cloud services because of this incident and saying "See! See! Cloud failed!" then they're missing the point. Cloud is, in my opinion, just a term for an externally managed service. It's not magical. In a simplistic definition, it's software running on hardware, except someone else hosts and manages it for you.

With that being said, remember, on-premise solutions can also fail.

I remember an incident a few years ago at a company I did some work for. They had a major power failure, and the UPS kicked in with 30 minutes of juice left in the batteries until the propane generator would take over. The generator kicked on as normal, as it was tested every week and was automatically started and stopped after 30-60 seconds of run time. The generator had enough propane in the tanks to last about a week.

Sadly, nobody had been assigned to put oil in that generator, let alone check the level on a regular basis. Have you ever heard an engine die from a lack of oil? It's not good. The sound of the UPS kicking back in with 10 minutes left to manually power down all servers so they wouldn't go down hard was pretty awful to hear as well. I can still remember those awful repetitive beeps in the dark server room.

The crux of the matter was that the specifics of "maintaining" the generator were never ironed out. The IT department took it for granted that the maintenance services were being taken care of by another department.

That little oops caused the company to be out of business for the better part of eight hours. Once the typical finger pointing was over, it got down to the brass tacks. How do we ensure this doesn't happen again? How do we learn from this? I'd think Amazon and their customers are asking those questions at this point.

What we can learn from this outage is a lesson in risk management. No matter what the business scenario is, we must always evaluate the risk. AWS does offer a geographically dispersed service. If they have an outage because of weather or natural disaster, then services swap over to an unaffected data center. If customers were told that there were high availability options available but didn't purchase them, then it's a case of "you get what you pay for." If you don't pay for redundancy, you won't get it. But Netflix, Pinterest, and Instagram aren't Tom's Trucking Company with 100 customers. If Tom's Trucking is down for a day, 100 customers are affected, but they can probably do manual inventory and manual receipts, and business goes on, albeit a little slower and less efficiently. Maybe they can live with that. Either way, that question needs to be asked, from Netflix down to Tom's Trucking.

A high-profile outage for even a couple of hours isn't good for anybody. Amazon and its affected customers get some bad press, and the end consumers suffer.

Whatever path you choose—cloud, on-premise, or a hybrid—you need to ensure you've weighed the risks for all the choices you make. You need to ensure everything is covered to meet the expectations set by not only the people you report to, but also the people who mean most to your company: your customers. Every time you hear about something like this is a harsh reminder that it could be you that's down. Be sure your business continuity plans are in place and tested regularly.

Steve Pitcher
Steve Pitcher works with iTech Solutions, an IBM Premier Business Partner. He is a specialist in IBM i and IBM Power Systems solutions since 2001. Feel free to contact him directly This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
BLOG COMMENTS POWERED BY DISQUS

LATEST COMMENTS

Support MC Press Online

$

Book Reviews

Resource Center

  • SB Profound WC 5536 Have you been wondering about Node.js? Our free Node.js Webinar Series takes you from total beginner to creating a fully-functional IBM i Node.js business application. You can find Part 1 here. In Part 2 of our free Node.js Webinar Series, Brian May teaches you the different tooling options available for writing code, debugging, and using Git for version control. Brian will briefly discuss the different tools available, and demonstrate his preferred setup for Node development on IBM i or any platform. Attend this webinar to learn:

  • SB Profound WP 5539More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT Generic IBM announced the E1080 servers using the latest Power10 processor in September 2021. The most powerful processor from IBM to date, Power10 is designed to handle the demands of doing business in today’s high-tech atmosphere, including running cloud applications, supporting big data, and managing AI workloads. But what does Power10 mean for your data center? In this recorded webinar, IBMers Dan Sundt and Dylan Boday join IBM Power Champion Tom Huntington for a discussion on why Power10 technology is the right strategic investment if you run IBM i, AIX, or Linux. In this action-packed hour, Tom will share trends from the IBM i and AIX user communities while Dan and Dylan dive into the tech specs for key hardware, including:

  • Magic MarkTRY the one package that solves all your document design and printing challenges on all your platforms. Produce bar code labels, electronic forms, ad hoc reports, and RFID tags – without programming! MarkMagic is the only document design and print solution that combines report writing, WYSIWYG label and forms design, and conditional printing in one integrated product. Make sure your data survives when catastrophe hits. Request your trial now!  Request Now.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericForms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericIT security is a top priority for businesses around the world, but most IBM i pros don’t know where to begin—and most cybersecurity experts don’t know IBM i. In this session, Robin Tatam explores the business impact of lax IBM i security, the top vulnerabilities putting IBM i at risk, and the steps you can take to protect your organization. If you’re looking to avoid unexpected downtime or corrupted data, you don’t want to miss this session.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericCan you trust all of your users all of the time? A typical end user receives 16 malicious emails each month, but only 17 percent of these phishing campaigns are reported to IT. Once an attack is underway, most organizations won’t discover the breach until six months later. A staggering amount of damage can occur in that time. Despite these risks, 93 percent of organizations are leaving their IBM i systems vulnerable to cybercrime. In this on-demand webinar, IBM i security experts Robin Tatam and Sandi Moore will reveal:

  • FORTRA Disaster protection is vital to every business. Yet, it often consists of patched together procedures that are prone to error. From automatic backups to data encryption to media management, Robot automates the routine (yet often complex) tasks of iSeries backup and recovery, saving you time and money and making the process safer and more reliable. Automate your backups with the Robot Backup and Recovery Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAManaging messages on your IBM i can be more than a full-time job if you have to do it manually. Messages need a response and resources must be monitored—often over multiple systems and across platforms. How can you be sure you won’t miss important system events? Automate your message center with the Robot Message Management Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAThe thought of printing, distributing, and storing iSeries reports manually may reduce you to tears. Paper and labor costs associated with report generation can spiral out of control. Mountains of paper threaten to swamp your files. Robot automates report bursting, distribution, bundling, and archiving, and offers secure, selective online report viewing. Manage your reports with the Robot Report Management Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAFor over 30 years, Robot has been a leader in systems management for IBM i. With batch job creation and scheduling at its core, the Robot Job Scheduling Solution reduces the opportunity for human error and helps you maintain service levels, automating even the biggest, most complex runbooks. Manage your job schedule with the Robot Job Scheduling Solution. Key features include:

  • LANSA Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.

  • LANSAWhen it comes to creating your business applications, there are hundreds of coding platforms and programming languages to choose from. These options range from very complex traditional programming languages to Low-Code platforms where sometimes no traditional coding experience is needed. Download our whitepaper, The Power of Writing Code in a Low-Code Solution, and:

  • LANSASupply Chain is becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable. From raw materials for manufacturing to food supply chains, the journey from source to production to delivery to consumers is marred with inefficiencies, manual processes, shortages, recalls, counterfeits, and scandals. In this webinar, we discuss how:

  • The MC Resource Centers bring you the widest selection of white papers, trial software, and on-demand webcasts for you to choose from. >> Review the list of White Papers, Trial Software or On-Demand Webcast at the MC Press Resource Center. >> Add the items to yru Cart and complet he checkout process and submit

  • Profound Logic Have you been wondering about Node.js? Our free Node.js Webinar Series takes you from total beginner to creating a fully-functional IBM i Node.js business application.

  • SB Profound WC 5536Join us for this hour-long webcast that will explore:

  • Fortra IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn: