Making a Good First Impression, Then Making It Last

Our guest blogger today is Kathy Tri, a senior software engineer at IBM Rochester who functions as the technical lead and architect for IBM i install, upgrade, license management and Power System upgrades. She shares insights and information about her team’s ongoing efforts to deliver an exceptional client experience. Read it, and then join the conversation on facebook.

A positive out-of-box experience for clients deploying IBM i has been a key point of emphasis from day one, and will continue to be in the future. Much is owed to the integration of the operating system with key functions, such as security and database, and with IBM middleware like WebSphere Application Server. We package and test everything together as a fully integrated stack to ensure the quick and easy deployment of an IBM i system or partition. As technical lead and architect for installs and upgrades, my goal is to ensure an easy migration to a new release with minimal downtime. The key objective for the IBM i operating system and its related products is to enable our customers to run their businesses without having to worry about the computer. A common thread among customers running IBM i systems is that they plug it in and leave it alone. It just runs with minimal intervention. This is what we had in mind when we developed IBM i support for what we call n-2 (n minus two) upgrades. For example, if an IBM i customer is currently on release V5R4, they can directly move to release 7.1 without having to install 6.1. This allows a customer to remain on a release for at least four years before needing to move to a new release. While it would be wonderful if customers could always remain current with operating system releases and technical refreshes, we know this is often not possible.

Since customers may have more than one partition or system, we also support interoperability between systems that are one or two releases apart. In other words, interoperability allows clients to develop applications on a current release and deploy them to a release n-1 or n-2. Another out-of-the-box feature is that most customer data can be moved from any prior release of AS/400 to the current releases of IBM i. For example, just the other day I was asked about moving applications and data from a V4R2 AS/400 to IBM i 7.1 on a new POWER7 system. Indeed, most of the data and applications will move with minimal reconfiguration needed. This is not a typical upgrade, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it as an upgrade strategy, but it is an example of how we try to ensure investment protection and ease of moving to current releases and hardware. In this case, the customer will have the applications they love and will be able to gradually take advantage of new functions available.

Today we offer a number of tools to help plan the install or upgrade of an IBM i partition. For example, the IBM Pre-upgrade Verification tool for IBM i ensures that key items have been completed before upgrading the operating system and related products. To allow for remote install and eliminate media errors, we encourage downloading your entitled software and license keys from the Entitled Software Support (ESS) site.

Once the media images have been downloaded, you can use the resulting image to upgrade or install a new partition. In addition, network install allows for remote install from a single media image, which makes it easier to deploy the release. If you want a good reference for this capability, download IBM i Network Install using Network File System. Meanwhile, the IBM i Information Center has complete information about planning and installing a new release of IBM i.

The virtual media, or network install, was very beneficial for an IBM i customer who had a system that was older than  five years. They wanted to move to a current release to take advantage of some new application modernization functions. Their dilemma, however, was they didn’t know where the physical box was anymore! No one had needed to do anything with the physical system for a few years and the building they were in had been remodeled. They were wondering if there was any way to upgrade without having to physically load the DVDs into the system. Using the virtual media that was downloaded from the ESS website, they were able to upgrade the system without touching the physical box. They eventually found the system, it had accidently been walled over!

The out-of-box experience has always been key to IBM i customers. Our goal has been to provide them with an exceptional client experience that yields fast time to value. The influence of this “plug it in and go” capability has also rubbed off onto new POWER environments. IBM PureSystems takes it another step and optimizes the complete solution stack, combining advanced IBM hardware and software along with patterns of expertise. The result is an optimized configuration that is fully integrated and simple to deploy. The rapid deployment capabilities of these systems provide a simplified experience. Individual elements of your IT infrastructure need not be separately acquired. As a result, customers can focus on delivering business value. Sound familiar?

 

 

 

The Story of Application Runtime Expert

The Application Runtime Expert (5733ARE) product was announced in June 2010 and when this product first became available, several articles were written about it. However, since that time there has been less written and when I've asked clients if they are aware of this product and what it can do, I've discovered that many people are not familiar with it.

The Application Runtime Expert provides an easy way for you to capture the environmental settings for a workload or application. You can then later compare the saved settings with the current environment to determine what has changed. But rather than repeat what's already been written about the product (see the references at the end of this blog), I thought I'd share a short story behind the development of this product.

What's particularly interesting about this product is that it was developed by IBM Rochester developers looking for a way to make their jobs easier. IBM i has an excellent support process and when clients report problems, the developers do their best to try to identify the root cause of the problem. For some teams, environmental issues – such as job settings, system values, network settings, etc. - can cause problems that are not readily apparent. The HTTP Server team had a particularly difficult client problem that took a long time to resolve – the root cause issue was that the QSPCENV system value was set to *S36. The difficulty in troubleshooting a problem that had a very simple fix (change the QSPCENV system value to *NONE) led the team of developers to create a simple tool that would collect the configuration settings from a client system and return those settings to the development team. They then wrote a simple utility to compare the client's environment to known good values to quickly assess whether configuration or environmental settings were possibly the issue.

This approach turned out to make their jobs much easier and as proof of the tool's success became apparent, the i development team determined the product would be valuable to those outside of the Rochester lab. And thus, the internal tool was made into a product that you can use for your environment and hopefully to help make problem identification and resolution easier for you.

For more information on the Application Runtime Expert product, see the following:

Application Runtime Expert product

Turning Big Problems into Small Ones

You and i ARE Solving Problems

 

 

i Can … Display the Status of Your IOA Cache Batteries

I assume most of you are familiar with the I/O adapters that have cache batteries on them and the importance of monitoring the status of those batteries to ensure they are replaced before they fail. In case you’re not: the IOA has a cache to improve performance; the application doesn’t have to wait for the data to be written to the disk. The cache is powered by a battery in the IOA to ensure the cache data is preserved even if the IOA is powered off or reset. However, if the cache battery is failing, then the data is written directly to disk and the cache isn’t used, which can result in significant performance degradation. As such, you should know when the cache batteries are failing to get them replaced before it affects your application's performance. 

Various ways to display the status of your cache batteries exist, including one very new method that we’ve recently made available via PTFs. I'm only going to briefly summarize the existing methods of checking the battery status, since I really want to share the new information.

The system is aware when the cache batteries start to fail, and sends message CPPEA13 to the QSYSOPR message queue.  The first-level message text for this message is somewhat vague – “Contact your hardware service provider.” However, in the recovery section of the message it says you should have the cache battery replaced. When this message is sent to QSYSOPR, you’ll also have a problem created in the problem log, and you can use WRKPRB to display the problem details.

You can use the Work with Disk Status (WRKDSKSTS) command to determine if you have cache batteries requiring attention. Press F11 to get to the second panel; if the status for the disk unit is DEGRADED, it’s possible the issue is due to failing cache batteries. If your drives are mirrored, however, they’ll always show ACTIVE status and you must use one of the alternative ways to check the cache battery status.

There are a two different ways you can view your cache battery status using System Service Tools (STRSST): 

1. You can use the Hardware Service Manager to work with resources containing cache battery packs, which will show you the resources that have cache batteries, and you can then display the battery information.

2. You can use the Display/Alter/Dump service function to invoke the batteryinfo Advanced Analysis feature to display the status of your cache batteries.


And now for the news: some recent PTFs (one for each supported release) now provide a simple program that you can call that to display the cache battery status.  They are:

7.1 - SI40406
6.1 - SI40404
5.4 - SI40403

To display the cache battery information, simply run the following:

CALL QSYS/QSMBTTCC

This will create a spool file containing the cache battery information for the IBM i partition where the function is run. To use this function you must have *SERVICE special authority, or be authorized to the Service Trace function. The Change Function Usage (CHGFCNUSG) command, with a function ID of QIBM_SERVICE_TRACE, can also be used to change the list of users that are allowed to perform this operation.

i Can … Add all Electronic Software Delivery Files to an Image Catalog Automatically

This blog article was written by Jeff Block. Jeff is the team leader for LP install support as well as a team member of the virtual image catalog team.

I’m going to show you how easy it is to use the Electronic Software Delivery (ESD) process to get your image catalog set up and ready for your upgrade. If you’ve attempted to use ESD in the past and was overwhelmed with the long file names (e.g., B_GROUP1_01_IBM_i_RS_710-00_20100402_204531879.iso) and the difficulty in setting up an image catalog, then this process is for you.

A new API called QVOIFIMG (Fill Image Catalog) was recently created via PTFs for releases 5.4, 6.1 and 7.1 that will find multiple files within an image catalog directory and add them to the specified image catalog automatically. This saves you the time and effort of performing several ADDIMGCLGEs. The following steps will have you ready to continue with your upgrade process in short order:

1. Create your image catalog
CRTIMGCLG IMGCLG(<mycatalog>) DIR(<mycatalogdir>)
2. Follow the ESD process to download your images and put them into <mycatalogdir>
3. Add the images to your catalog
CALL PGM(QVOIFIMG) PARM('<mycatalog>' '*ISO' 0)
4. Associate the image catalog to your virtual device
LODIMGCLG IMGCLG(<mycatalogdir>) OPTION(*LOAD) DEV(<virOptDevice>)

By default, the ESD process provides the .iso suffix on each of the downloaded images. The *ISO parameter value on the call to QVOIFIMG will only add files with the extension of .iso to your image catalog and ignore all other files. If you’ve renamed your files, don’t worry, as you can replace *ISO with *ALL, and all files found within the image catalog directory will be added regardless of name.

It’s really that simple. The QVOIIFIMG API documentation can be found in the IBM i 7.1 version of the Information Center.  

The PTFs providing this new API are SI39365 (5.4), SI39364 (6.1) and SI39362 (7.1).

Hopefully this API will make the upgrade process using ESD a little less daunting and by combining the download process with image catalogs, you’ll have the added benefit of never having to use physical media again.

i Can … Use AnyNet in 7.1?

What's up with AnyNet in 7.1?  If you have the 7.1 release, you’ll be able to see that the user interface for AnyNet hasn’t gone away. If you use it, it will probably work. We didn’t remove any of the AnyNet functionality in 7.1. To make matters even more confusing, all of the AnyNet documentation remains in the 7.1 Information Center.

IBM made a statement of direction some time ago that included the following:

“AnyNet support is also available in V5R3 through V6R1, however, IBM plans to withdraw support of AnyNet in the release following V6R1; customers currently using AnyNet should start to move to Enterprise Extender in preparation for this.”

Is AnyNet supported or not in the 7.1 release?

AnyNet isn’t supported on 7.1. The 7.1 Memo to Users has the following information:

“Starting in i 7.1, AnyNet® (a method used to run SNA communications traffic over IP) is no longer supported. Users of AnyNet are encouraged to migrate to Enterprise Extenders as a replacement. For information about migrating to Enterprise Extenders from AnyNet, see the Migrating from AnyNet to Enterprise Extender topic in the IBM i Information Center.”

If you continue to use AnyNet and have problems, you’ll be told that you should be using Enterprise Extender.

Enterprise Extender is more robust than AnyNet and has more functionality. IBM has published a document, “Enterprise Extender on i5/OS” that reviews the Enterprise Extender architecture and basic configuration, as well as how to migrate from AnyNet to EE.

There's also documentation in the Information Center on Configuring Enterprise Extender, as well as Migrating from AnyNet to Enterprise Extender. (Although these links are for the 7.1 documentation, this same documentation also exists in the 6.1 and 5.4 Information Centers).

i Can ... Install IBM i 6.1.1 Over the Network

On October 20, IBM announced that an IBM i 6.1 environment on a POWER6 processor-based system can be upgraded to IBM i 6.1.1 with an image on the network file server. Prior to this enhancement, you’d have to install with physical media or with virtual media located locally on the system being upgraded. This required a manual FTP the virtual images across the network to the individual partitions to be installed.

 

Now the image file can be shared over the network.

 

The concept of a virtual optical device using image files shared over a network was implemented in IBM i 6.1. This new function was limited to Licensed Program install, PTF install and data restore operations. Now with the recent enhancements, users can also upgrade Licensed Internal Code and IBM i operating system using this same shared image file support.

 

Advantages of Network Install

• Normal full function install screens (virtual media install did a copy of LIC under the covers)
• Quick, easy and efficient
• Install multiple partitions at the same time from the same image server
• No manual change to the panel functions in the partition properties on the HMC
• Great for users who have large hardware configurations with multiple partitions that share physical DVD devices
• Simple setup and configuration

 

System Requirements

To prepare and share virtual optical images with the Network File System (NFS) network, you need to ensure that the client system and source system meet specific requirements.

Image File Server Requirements. To share virtual optical images through a network, the source system serves as the image server and must meet the following requirements:

• System must be at IBM i 6.1 or greater
• PTFs SI35186 and SI35189
• NFS server *RPC, *SVR, and *MNT must be started
• The server must be able to share virtual optical images using version 3 or later of the NFS
• The images to be served must exist in an image catalog, which must have an image catalog path name that is limited to 127 characters. Path name characters are limited to A-Z, a-z, 0-9 and / (slash). Each image file name is limited to 127 characters.
• A volume list (VOLUME_LIST) file containing the list of images to be loaded in the virtual optical device must exist in the image catalog directory. The VFYIMGCLG command is used to create the volume list file from the image catalog containing the images you want to share. A volume list has the following characteristics:

             o Must be called VOLUME_LIST
             o Each line is either a image file name or a comment
             o ASCII format
             o All entries are ended by the end of a line
             o All characters following the pound sign ’#’ are considered comments until the end of the line
             o Comments can be added after # and must be followed by an EOL character
             o Provides the order that the image files will be processed on the client system
             o File names are limited to 127 characters
             o Can be created with the Verify Image Catalog Entry (VFYIMGCLG) with the NFSSHR(*YES) parameter or manually by using a ASCII editor
             o No tabs or line feeds can be used in the path name

Note: Changes to VOLUME_LIST file aren’t active until the next time the client device is varied off/on.

 

Client System Requirements. The client system or system to be installed needs to access virtual optical images through a network and must meet the following requirements:

• System must be at IBM i 6.1 or greater
• POWER6 or later
• The install media must be IBM i 6.1.1 or later
• The following i 6.1 PTFs are required: SI35201 (lead PTF – this will cause the other PTFs to be ordered and installed), SI35186, SI35189, SI35747, MF47284, MF47285
• An 632B-003 optical device is created by using the Create Device Description Optical (CRTDEVOPT) command. The client must also have either a service tools server or a LAN console connection configured and version 4 of the Internet Protocol (IP).

For complete instructions on using the latest network install support, see the documentation “IBM i Network Install using Network File System.” 

I'd like to thank Al Smith for writing this blog article. Al is the team leader of the IBM i install and virtual media team in the Rochester development lab.