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Greetings!
i can do anything with iTech Solutions
Happy New Year, and everyone at iTech Solutions hopes you had a very happy holiday season.
The new year is always filled with hopes, dreams, new goals, and great expectations for the upcoming year. What are your plans for the year? Like bringing in a new computer or performing an upgrade, these hopes, dreams, and goals need a plan to make them happen. They just don't happen. So the questions I always ask everyone are: What are you going to do this year to improve your IBM i knowledge? Get up to the latest release of IBM i? What are you going to learn this year to improve your career? What skills do you need to acquire? Challenge yourself to at least learn one new thing.
If you are still on an older release of the operating system, or on older hardware, then it is really time you started to think about moving forward. Contact iTech Solutions, and allow them to work with you to get you on the latest operating system and/or the latest hardware. You will be happy you did. See who IBM relies on for practical know how in upgrading to the latest release of IBM i. IBM knows who is doing OS Upgrades all over the country. That is why on Tuesday November 29th we recorded a session with Pete Massiello of iTech Solutions to present with Steve Will (Chief Architect, IBM i) the topic Moving to 7 (Power7 and IBM i 7.1). IBM knows that Pete & iTech Solutions have the practical experience of both POWER7 hardware upgrades and IBM i 7.1 Operating System Upgrades, so they have asked him to educate their customers on what he has uncovered from all his experience. You can also have iTech Solutions perform your hardware upgrade, hardware migration, or operating system upgrade. See the November newsletter for reply information, go to the events article.
This issue of our newsletter has four articles. In the first, the topic is determining the address of my FSP. The second article is about compressing your Job Tables after setting the size correctly. The third article lists some of the upcoming events in which iTech Solutions will be participating. The last article is for your reference with updated PTF information.
If you are still on V5R4, send Pete an email and he can help you upgrade to V6R1 or V7R1. With over 325 V6R1 upgrades done to date you know iTech Solutions has the expertise and know how. iTech Solutions can help you improve performance, perform security audits; implement a High Availability solution; perform health checks, systems management, remote administration, PTF management, blade installations, iSCSI configurations, backup/recovery; upgrade an existing machine; or upgrade to a new machine. If you are thinking of LPAR or HMC, then think iTech Solutions. We have the skills to help you get the most out of your IBM i.
For more information on any of the articles below please visit us at on the web at iTech Solutions or email iTech Solutions. We would love for you to let us know any articles that you wish for the future, or if you enjoy any of the articles in the current newsletters.
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What is the address of my FSP?
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You connect to your Flexible Service Processor (FSP), via the Advanced Systems Management Interface (ASMI). Every Power5, Power6, and Power7 machine has a FSP. In fact, some of the larger Power System machines will have dual FSPs for redundancy.
Each FSP has two ports, and they are labeled HMC1 & HMC2 on the back of your machine. These are special Ethernet ports that you connect to either access the ASMI or if you have an HMC, the HMC will connect to these same ports.
If you want to access the ASMI, the default address you will need to use are:
Power6 & Power7: HMC1 - 169.254.2.147
Power6 & Power7: HMC2 - 169.254.3.147
If you have dual FSPs, then the 2nd FSP will be accessed at 146 instead of 147.
Power5: HMC1 - 192.168.2.147
Power5: HMC2 - 192.168.3.147
Someone could have also changed either of the addresses. To determine what the addresses are you will use the Control Panel display on the front of the machine. You need to go to Control Panel function 30. To do this we have to first go into Manual mode, so we can get up to 30.
- Using the Up Arrow on the Control Panel, press until you see 02 in the Display.
- Then press the Enter. The first letter is where to IPL from, and the second letter is we are going to do a Normal or Manual IPL. If there is an N (Normal) displayed, we must change it to an M (Manual).
- To change it to manual, press the enter button until the Less than sign is next to the N. Then press the Up arrow, followed by the Enter. Keep pressing Enter until you are back at 02.
- Use the Up Arrow until the Control Panel displays 30. Then, hit Enter. The display will now show 30**. If you hit the Up Arrow, the display will show the first address is for HMC1, pressing the Up Arrow another time the address for HMC2 is displayed.
- Now go back to 02, and put the mode back to N (for Normal).
This also is a good way to validate the FSP address when your HMC is attached. |
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Compressing Job Tables.
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How many jobs are currently on your system? If you look at WRKACTJOB, in the upper right-hand side of the screen, it will display the number of jobs with a status of Active. Yet if you look at WRKSYSSTS and look in the upper left-hand quadrant of the screen, it will display Jobs in the System. On the system I am currently looking at, WRKACTJOB has 575 jobs, and WRKSYSSTS has 18,137 jobs. Well these two numbers aren't even close. Remember, WRKACTJOB is displaying the number of jobs that are ACTIVE in the system. WRKSYSSTS displays the total number of jobs in your system. A job can be in one of three states: ACTIVE, on Job Queue, or on Output Queue. Therefore, it makes sense that WRKSYSSTS always shows you more jobs than WRKACTJOB. Go take a quick look at your system using the WRKSYSSTS & WRKACTJOB commands.
There are a few System Values that you should correlate to these values. The first one is QACTJOB. This should be slightly higher than the value on the WRKACTJOB command. So, on my system from the values discussed above, I would make QACTJOB about 600. The next value is QTOTJOB. This should be higher than WRKSYSSTS jobs in the system. On this system, I would probably change QTOTJOB to 19,000. Every job on the system will be in the Work Control Block (WCB) Table; therefore it's important that you size this table correctly. If you size the WCB Table too small, it will be fragmented. After changing these system values, you need to compress these job tables during the next IPL. You can use the CHGIPLA command to set the job tables to be compressed at the next IPL. Use the parameter CPRJOBTBL(*NEXT) on the CHGIPLA command. Once this is all done, you should see all the commands that use your Work Control Block table quicker (WRKUSRJOB, WRKSBMJOB, WRKSPLF, WRKACTJOB, etc).
I can tell from the spread of the two numbers of jobs in WRKACTJOB and WRKSYSSTS, that there are a lot of spool files on this system. In a previous newsletter, we discussed the Delete Expired Spool files command DLTEXPSPLF. I recommend that all customers make plans for (or "consider") archiving or deleting spool files.
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Upcoming Events.
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Thursday, March 8, 2012- 2 p.m Eastern time, 11 a.m. Pacific time. Is Your Business Recovery Ready? Speakers:
- Debbie Saugen, IBM, Chief Architect, IBM i Resiliency Services
- Pete Massiello, President, iTech Solutions
Protecting data with a good backup and recovery strategy has always been vital in any business. But surprisingly many companies don't always test their recovery strategy on a regular basis. Making a backup is good; testing your recovery readiness is essential. In this webcast, two of the top industry experts on IBM i backup and recovery discuss best practices for securing your data and how to assess your recovery readiness on IBM i systems. You'll find how to use IBM Backup Recovery and Media Services (BRMS) to prepare your backup strategy and to make sure your business is recovery ready. BRMS is IBM's popular product for backup and recovery; it's simple to deploy for mid-sized companies, while also having the advanced features needed by large enterprises.
March 20 to 22, Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association www.wmcpa.org Lake Geneva, WI.
- Thursday Keynote: A Programmers Future: Looking Back to See the Future.
- What do you need to know when upgrading IBM i.
- Tips & Tricks to improve performance and reduce disk space.
- Virtual i partitions hosted by IBM i.
April 2 to 4, Northeast IBM User Group Conference www.neugc.org, Framingham, MA.
- What do you need to know when upgrading IBM i.
- Building Virtual i partitions hosted by IBM i.
- Understanding the HMC, FSP, IBM i, and Firmware.
May 2 to 6, COMMON User Group, www.common.org Disneyland, California. - What do you need to know when upgrading IBM i.
- Building Virtual i partitions hosted by IBM i.
- Tips and Tricks to improve perofmrance and reduce disk space.
- Understanding the HMC, FSP, IBM i, and Firmware.
- A Programmers future: Looking back to see into the Future.
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| Release levels and PTFs |
People are always asking me how often they should be performing PTF maintenance, and when is the right time to upgrade their operating system. I updated this article from last month with the current levels of PTFs. Let's look at PTFs. First, PTFs are Program Temporary Fixes that are created by IBM to fix a problem that has occurred or to possibly prevent a problem from occurring. In addition, some times PTFs add new functionality, security, or improve performance. Therefore, I am always dumbfounded as to why customers do not perform PTF maintenance on their machine at least quarterly. If IBM has come out with a fix for your disk drives, why do you want to wait for your disk drive to fail with that problem, only to be told that there is a fix for that problem, and if you had applied the PTF beforehand, you would have averted the problem. Therefore, I think a quarterly PTF maintenance strategy is a smart move. Many of our customers are on our quarterly PTF maintenance program, and that provides them with the peace of mind of knowing their system is up to date on PTFs. Below is a table of the major group PTFs for the last few releases. This is what we are installing for our customers on iTech Solutions Quarterly Maintenance program.
Releases
Cumul. Pack 11270 11256 11137 8267
Tech. Refresh 3
Grp Hipers 51 111 168 169
DB Group 12 23 32 24
Java Group 7 18 28 23
Print Group 4 22 45 20
Backup/Recov. 11 24 42 33
Blade/IXA/IXS 8 22 15 -
HTTP 11 23 30 17
TCP/IP 5 13 20 16
Security 12 26 21
The easiest way to check your levels is to issue the command WRKPTFGRP. They should all have a status of installed, and you should be up to the latest for all the above, based upon your release. Now there are more groups than the ones listed above, but these are the general ones that most people require. We can help you know which group PTFs you should be installing on your machine based upon your licensed programs. Here is a nice tidbit. The Cumulative PTF package number is broken down as YDDD, where Y is the year and DDD is the day it was released. Therefore, if we look at the cumulative package for V5R4, the ID is 9104. We can determine that it was created on the 104th day of 2009, which is April 14, 2009. Look at your machine and this will give you a quick indication of just how far out of date in PTFs you may be. I left V5R1 & V5R2 off the list, because if you are on V5R1 or V5R2, you don't need to be worrying about PTFs, you really need to be upgrading your operating system. The same can be said for V5R3, but there are still customers who are on those releases.
If you have an HMC, you should be running V7R7.3M0 SP2, or V7R7.4 with eFix MH01296. If your HMC is a C03, then it should stay at V7R3.5 SP4.
For your Flexible Service Processor (FSP) that is inside your Power 5 or Power5+ (520, 515, 525, 550, 570), the code level of the FSP should be 01_SF240_415. Power 6 (940x M15, M25, & M50 machines, and 8203-E4A & 8204-E4A) customers should be running EL350_118. For Power6 (MMA, 560, and 570 machines) your FSP should be at EM350_118. If you have a Power6 595 (9119) then you should be on EH350_120.
Depending on which POWER7 model & generation (B or C). The firmware level is AL730_066 for 8202-E4B & 8205-E6B (710, 720, 730, 740), AL730_066 for 750 (8233-E8B) & 755 (8236-E8C). Use AM730_066 for 770 (9117-MMB) & 780 (9179-MHB). The firmware level is AL740-046 for 8202-E4C & 8205-E6C (710, 720, 730, 740). Use AM740_045 for 770 (9117-MMC) & 780 (9179-MHC).
If you need help with upgrading your HMC or FSP just give us a call. We will be happy to perform the function for you or assist you in doing it. Contact Pete Massiello.
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We have the skills to help you get the most out of your IBM i. For more information on any of the articles please contact us at info@itechsol.com . We would also like to know what you think of this newsletter and any items you would like us to discuss in future issues.
Our staff of Certified i5/OS professionals can help you get more out of your machines. Remember,
i want everything to work.
i want control.
i want an i
i need iTech Solutions.
Sincerely,
Pete Massiello
iTech Solutions |
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www.itechsol.com