Resources
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.
Monitoring
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

A Modern Approach to Performance Management

Wed, 08/24/2016
Using modern performance monitoring tools, you can build a successful strategy for performance management and quickly add value in your organization.
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
Blog

Who's Afraid of IASPs?

By Tom Huntington on Tue, 08/16/2016
As IASP technology continues to grow, so will its uses for high availability (HA) and backups. The result of that will be shrinking hardware costs and complexity and increased redundancy.
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

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
Article

Is the i Ready for the Three Vs of Big Data?

By Tom Huntington on Mon, 06/27/2016
The three Vs of big data are volume, velocity, and variety, but in order derive value from big data, IT departments need tools to store massive amounts of data (volume) and make sure it is always available for quick analysis (velocity).
Automation
Case Study

SunGard Public Sector Uses Halcyon's Operation Center

Halcyon’s Operations Center Suite enabled SunGard Public Sector to use an intuitive tool to automatically handle the vast majority of alerts arising from the monitoring solution, with business-critical alerts sent to a technician trained to immediately deal with systems issues.
Monitoring
Corpus Christi bridge
Case Study

Remote Monitoring Using Operations Center Suite and Network Server Suite

The City of Corpus Christi uses Halcyon’s Network Server Suite, a fully integrated solution that manages all network servers and devices from a single console, and Halcyon’s Operations Center Suite, an enterprise console for IBM i centralized monitoring and management, to streamline their department.
Monitoring