Resources

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Automate the Un-Automatable

Automated job scheduling means your batch jobs run smoothly and your stress level goes down, but that’s only half the battle if you’re using labor-intensive, interactive applications that require you to fill out screens to submit a job.
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4 Reasons to Add VTLs

Backup and recovery processes are among the unsung heroes of data center operations. Though end results may not be readily apparent on an everyday basis, natural and digital disasters have a way of humbling companies that do not take this risk management discipline seriously.
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Disks Busy vs. ASP Busy in Robot Monitor

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)

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

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

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.
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Monitor, Capture, and Send Log Events With Powertech SIEM Agent for IBM i

In recent years, regulatory initiatives like Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, PCI, and GLBA have placed increased emphasis on the need to monitor and secure sensitive information. For example, The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard dictates one of the most stringent requirements of all—logs must be reviewed daily, and a minimum of three months of logs must be available for analysis.
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Improve Event Auditing Using the System Audit Journal

With any security implementation, established rules become less effective as time passes. Because your security requirements and your systems aren’t static, you must continually audit and adapt your security plan to stay current. Be aware that your system is constantly changing.
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High Availability and Your Enterprise Job Streams

The concept of high availability has been on the minds of IT decision makers in the last several years. As the recent IBM Top Concerns survey revealed, comprehensive high availability is the second highest concern among IBM i users, with only keeping current skill sets coming ahead.
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Get a Handle on Your Job Stream with Forecasting

A Robot Schedule forecast shows you the run activity scheduled for all Robot Schedule jobs over a time period that you specify. Robot Schedule uses the job schedule, job completion history, and any information you add for user jobs, remote prerequisites, and members of remote groups to make its forecast.
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On the Trail of IBM i Audit Data

Believe it or not, auditors are your friends, but audit reporting might be your worst enemy. Gathering all that data can take ages, unless you’ve already keeping automated audit trails across your operations.
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Robot and FlashCopy

Last month, Chuck Stupca (retired IBMer) and Chuck Losinski (Fortra) presented a webinar discussing FlashCopy for IBM i . Based on the attendance, it looks like this is a very important topic for many of you so I wanted to explain how FlashCopy ties to Robot products.
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Don’t Be Exposed In *PUBLIC!

Security typically operates so that users who are not granted authority have no authority. IBM i security, however, has a unique concept known as *PUBLIC.