Optimum Solutions – Payroll Migration Shoutout

We’ve finished our payroll migration to Optimum recently.  We’ve been on another product for about 10 years and needed a change for various reasons.

I figured I’d mention to fellow IBM i enthusiasts that I haven’t been part of a smoother software migration.  From pre-sales conversations to hammering out a couple of kinks at the end, the implementers were courteous, professional and technically proficient.  A nice group of folks to speak with as well.

I can say it couldn’t have went any better.

Upgrade Planning Checklist for IBM i 6.1 (V6R1)

Here’s a new little ditty I did for Search400.  If anyone has any words of wisdom or pitfalls to watch for when upgrading to V6R1 I’d love to hear about it.

Please discuss.

http://search400.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid3_gci1378651_tax2f7,00.html

Audit Time!!!

I love this time of year.  Snow is falling.  Holiday music everywhere you go.  Someone scrutinizing your systems with a fine toothed comb and a red pen.

No worries right?  You just have to ensure your systems are up to snuff all year round.  Like always having a clean bathroom, you never worry when company comes to your house and needs to take a sh…uh, shower.

I have monthly system reports that show me some basic information.  By doing this it allows a quick eyeballing of recent activities while it’s fresh in people’s minds.  Then you can fix problems more easily than dealing with a whole bunch at the end of the year.  Here’s what I’ve got jimmied up to spit out at the end of each month as a pdf:

• New users in the last month and what special authorities they have
• User profile listing of all users (minus the IBM supplied profiles)
  • Profile status (enabled/disabled)
  • Special authorities
  • Storage quota set
  • Last date the user logged in
  • User class
  • Limited capabilities or not
  • Access to main menu (no default menu set)
• System value listing
• Listing of authorities granted in our ERP and Payroll systems
• Listing of dates/times vendors logged on to our system.  I’ll cross reference that with our job tracking system to make sure they’re only doing work when we want them to.
• DAT version and last update date of our Standguard Anti-virus

Power Handling with Multiple IBM i Servers

A little ditty I did for Search400.  This is kind of cute.  1 ups data cable and 3 AS/400′s.  Using remote commands to handle a multi-server power down.

http://search400.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid3_gci1375886,00.html

Product Review – iScore

Here’s a little ditty I did for Search400.  Vision Solutions has been hyping their free iScore utility and I did a review on it.

http://search400.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid3_gci1375229,00.html

Product Review – Kisco i2S3

Here’s a link to an i2S3 review I did for Search400.  Neat product and worth a look if you’re interested in cloud based storage for IBM i.

http://search400.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid3_gci1372509,00.html

Lord of the Tapes: Return of the Fire King

OK, well it’s the first Fire King I’ve purchased and I hate Lord of the Rings with a passion but I needed a title.

I have a Fire King DM2520-3 being delivered this Wednesday.  This little monster weighs in at a whopping 1050 lbs and will hold about 210 LTO tapes.  I only need storage for about 100 tapes, so there’s plenty of room for growth, documentation, CD/DVD media and other goodies we want to keep out of harms way.

While scoping out a fire resistant safe, I was given a few clear requirements.

• Get the best fire rating possible
  • The 3 hour rating may be overkill, considering a standard office fire temperature would be lower than the 2000 F heat that this safe is rated to protect against, so you can’t say I didn’t find the best available.  Actually, a 1 hour rated safe would probably suffice for most businesses considering if flame is in direct contact for 1 hour with your data safe then you’re probably storing your tapes in an oil refinery.  Heat away from the fire is a much lower temperature than the actual fire, and since most material/fuel will burn away fairly quickly, most 1 hour safes would do the trick.
• Theft protection
  • Considering this thing will take a locksmith a couple of hours to bust into if the front keypad melted off…it’s not easily broken into.  Plus you’re not going to get a few fellas to haul a 1050 lb box away without making a little noise and alerting security.

This puppy is also rated against 30 foot drops and explosions. I’m not sure what they test explosions with, but that would have to be a neat job.

I’m curious, what do you all use for storage protection?  Are there others out there with bigger, better and cooler physical media storage systems?

Comments welcome.

System/Message Monitoring on IBM i

Check out the November edition of System i News magazine.  I submitted an article a little while ago that’s now been published in the Pro VIP section.

Check out www.systeminetwork.com and get yourself a subscription to a great resource.

If you have any questions, please feel free to comment and I’ll do my best to help.

Search400 Tip – Tracking data changes on IBM i with triggers

http://search400.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid3_gci1370488,00.html

iSeries Storage Quotas: Keeping Users Informed

Users and storage quotas.  Groan…

If you’re using the IFS on your iSeries for users to store files then you’ve probably struggled with storage management.  I’ve often compared managing user storage to being a credit card company with a lot of irresponsible customers.  We give a customer a $1000 credit limit (i.e., 100 MB of storage) and they go on a spending spree.  Once they’ve reached their limit they ask for more money.  Since they have good credit we give them an extra $500 (i.e., bump their storage limit an additional 50 MB).  We may do this a couple of times before we catch on and send them to the collection department to hound them on a regular basis to get below their credit limit.

When users reach their storage quotas, simple things like generating spooled files are a problem because they don’t have any space to generate them.  Then they call IT when their reports don’t print.

Now, users who need their storage caps adjusted for a business requirement have a legitimate reason.  I’ll adjust your quota accordingly and perhaps make a case to add disk.  My beef lies with knuckleheads using 90% of their storage on pictures of their family trip to Disney World.  If you can afford the digital camera and the trip then you can afford a flash drive or a DVD burner.  So pretty please, keep the crap off the production server.

I put together a little automated email routine to inform users and cut down on storage related support calls.  Personally, I’d say I’ve easily cut the storage support calls by 50%.  Here’s the gist of what the user gets:

1. A quick explanation that every user has a storage quota and that they’re approaching it.
2. How much space they have left.
3. A list of files they own in descending order of size.  I also include the last change date of the object.

There’s a number of pieces that put this together.

1. Retrieve a listing of iSeries users using the DSPUSRPRF command to an outfile and then do some quick query/400 work.
2. I interface with our Domino server to get the email address for each user. This is done by way of a simple Domino agent that exports mail users to a csv file on our iSeries.
3. I determine which users are exceeding 90% of their storage quota via the output of the DSPUSRPRF command above.
4. I get a list of objects each user owns (using the RTVDIRINF command, some CL and query/400) and create a csv file for that user with some RPG.  The csv file generation stuff was put together after reviewing Scott Klement’s awesome website that has a section on working with files on the IFS (http://www.scottklement.com/rpg/ifs.html)
5. Each user is emailed the notification with the attached csv.  This is accomplished, in my scenario, with the Javamail application that you can install on your iSeries free of charge.

If anyone would like an explanation on how to do build this yourself, please let me know and I’d be happy to help.  It’s a Frankenstein solution, but it’s free and works well.