Resources

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.
Monitoring
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.
Monitoring
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.
Monitoring
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.
Monitoring
Article

High Availability and Your Enterprise Job Streams

By Tom Huntington on Tue, 08/16/2016
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.
IBM i Automation
Article

Get a Handle on Your Job Stream with Forecasting

By Chuck Losinski on Tue, 08/16/2016
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.
IBM i Automation
Article

Where to Start with IBM i Operations

By Tom Huntington on Tue, 08/16/2016
Have you recently adopted an IBM server running IBM i and don’t know where to begin with system operations? You are not alone.
Compliance
IBM i Automation
IBM i Business Intelligence
IBM i Cybersecurity
Article

On the Trail of IBM i Audit Data

By Chuck Losinski on Tue, 08/16/2016
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.
IBM i Automation
Article

Robot and FlashCopy

By Tom Huntington on Tue, 08/16/2016
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.
IBM i Automation
Article

Dealing with Temporary Files in WebDocs iSeries

Thu, 07/28/2016
WebDocs iSeries uses the IFS directory /RJSTEMP and the library RJSTEMP to store information and files temporarily. In general, it will attempt to clean up after itself, but there are situations which arise that do not perform clean up operations. As a result, files will gradually accumulate, taking up disk that could otherwise be used for other processes. The RJSTEMP library The RJSTEMP isn’t...
IBM i Automation
Article

Advanced Troubleshooting in WebDocs iSeries

Thu, 07/28/2016
As a WebDocs iSeries administrator, if something goes wrong your users will look to you to find, and fix, the matter. Simply knowing where to look when an initial error message is unclear can resolve a huge percentage of difficulties.
IBM i Automation
Article

Considerations For Securing NFS Shares For Use With Webdocs iSeries

Mon, 06/27/2016
NFS has long had a tentative relationship to security. As with its cousin, CIFS/SMB (more commonly know as Windows File Sharing), security was not an area of primary focus. The elements of security that exist are significant, but they are nontrivial to implement, particularly across operating systems and with third-party applications.
Automation
Article

Robot Best Practices

By Tom Huntington on Mon, 06/27/2016
Wondering about best practices for automating your IBM i processes with Robot systems management solutions? Take a look at this list and get off to a good start.
Automation
Monitoring