Article
Insight On Demand: One-Click IBM i Performance Investigations
By Kurt Thomas on Mon, 10/10/2016
In a manual monitoring environment, for every issue that arises, there is often a multiple-step investigation process to accompany it.
Blog
AS400 Monitoring Horror Stories
By Chuck Losinski on Wed, 10/05/2016
Everyone loves a good scary story by the campfire, so gather around your servers for warmth and take a lesson from these true tales of monitoring misfortunes.
Article
Application Modernization: An Interview with Trevor Perry
By Trevor Perry on Fri, 09/16/2016
Making your business applications modern goes way beyond the GUI. It’s about providing a superior user experience from front to back, IT to end user. Trevor Perry tells all in this article.
Article
The Commercial Power of SQL-Based Monitoring
By Kurt Thomas on Thu, 09/15/2016
The SQL-based monitoring feature in Robot Monitor means organizations can now apply the valuable insights, analysis, and real-time notifications that they use for system information to information from broader business applications.
Article
Enhanced Resource Monitoring with Robot Console
By Chuck Losinski on Tue, 08/30/2016
Robot Console has some exciting features for resource monitoring. You can automate the verification of your system resources and more!
Article
Does Your Robot Schedule Have Old Jobs That Never Run?
By Tom Huntington on Tue, 08/30/2016
When it comes to cleaning up these old Robot Schedule jobs, the best way is to use a SQL statement that you can run from STRSQL. This article will show you how.
Blog
Do You Need Enterprise Scheduling Software?
By Tom Huntington on Tue, 08/30/2016
Job scheduling was simpler when you only needed to worry about your IBM i (AS400) server and its batch processes, but several dynamics have changed over the past decade which have forced us into worrying about processes on other platforms.
Article
Can File Events Automatically Populate Reserved Command Variables?
By Chuck Losinski on Tue, 08/30/2016
A powerful feature of Robot Schedule file monitoring is the ability to capture the file name and path information, and use it in a file transfer, copy or delete operation, or combination of commands.
Article
Continuous Performance Data—Without Big Overhead
By Chuck Losinski on Tue, 08/30/2016
There are two sides to every Robot Network. It offers centralized control of the Robot software running on your IBM i partitions as well as performance monitoring and exception-based management across your environment.
Article
File Monitoring and Other Features of Robot Schedule 12
By Chuck Losinski on Tue, 08/30/2016
Let’s say you have a bank transmission or FTP process that occurs randomly throughout the day. How do you monitor that activity? OPAL? CLP scripts? Not anymore!
Blog
Big Data? BIG DEAL!
By Kurt Thomas on Tue, 08/30/2016
With the dawn of the big data era upon us, what can IBM i systems administrators expect in terms of the demands that will be placed upon them and what kind of resources will be required to cope? Find out what the managed services industry can teach us today about what the future holds for us tomorrow.
Article
Automate the Un-Automatable
By Chuck Losinski on Tue, 08/30/2016
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.
Article
Astronauts Rely on Checklists (and So Should You)
By Kurt Thomas on Tue, 08/30/2016
What do astronauts and IBM i admins have in common? Checklists! These seemingly simple yet effective devices serve as our external memories and deliver process consistency, but they’re not without limitations.
Article
4 Reasons to Add VTLs
By Tom Huntington on Tue, 08/30/2016
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.
Blog
Is Your Boss an Automation Skeptic?
By Tom Huntington on Mon, 08/29/2016
There is little doubt among IT experts as to the potential benefits of implementing automation tools at deeper levels within the data center environment. Yet adoption rates have not always mirrored this optimism. Especially among the small business crowd, automation is still seen as something that is "nice to have" as opposed to mission-critical.
Article
Disks Busy vs. ASP Busy in Robot Monitor
By Kurt Thomas on Thu, 08/25/2016
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.
Article
High Availability Fail Tales (and How to Avoid Them)
By Kurt Thomas on Thu, 08/25/2016
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.
Article
Monitoring the Demands of Fast Disk
By Kurt Thomas on Wed, 08/24/2016
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.
Article
Small but MIGHTY: Controlling the *CLS Object Type
By Kurt Thomas on Wed, 08/24/2016
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.