COMMON POWERUp 2024

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COMMON POWERUp 2024

THE BEST IBM i & POWER SYSTEMS EDUCATION.When you come to POWERUp, you’ll be able to customize your experience. Choose from 300 sessions, covering over 20 areas of IT, when you plan your schedule. Visit the largest Expo of its kind and meet the experts behind the solutions. Attend social events to meet renowned speakers and peers alike. This conference is structured to give you the pure education and professional connections needed to best enhance your career. Are you ready to POWERUp?

Exhibitor Hall: https://www.expocad.com/host/fx/common/s24/exfx.html

Exhibitor Hall Map Here

10:15am CDT

171: Foundations of IBM i Systems Admin: Reading Joblogs

Very few shops today have a dedicated system administrator; so the administrator hat ends up with the developer or other staff. So where do you start? We'll cover the basics of what you need to know to administer IBM i. In our favor, IBM has been busy over the past several releases improving the tools and options for administering our system!

Learning Objectives:
1) Understand the use of a joblog for finding errors and issues with jobs.
2) Learn the tools available for reading and searching joblogs.

Speakers

Larry Bolhuis

Cloud and Datacenter Engineer, IBM Champion, Service Express Inc.

Larry has grown up with computers since his father became a CE in 1967. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Calvin College in 1982 and soon after began working on IBM midrange equipment with the S/34 and S/36. Larry began working on the As/400 at its introduction In 1988.After spending many years as a developer Larry began working on communications, networking, and systems management tasks. Years of... Read More →

Foundations of IBM i Systems Admin Reading Joblogs pdf

Monday May 20, 2024 10:15am - 11:15am CDT
Meeting Room 203A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner

10:15am CDT

181: Intro to IBM i Services (SQL) for Admins

This session is designed for IBM i system administrators. It covers real-world problems faced by system admins, and how to solve them using SQL (with some help from IBM i Services). Don't be intimidated by SQL. It isn't just for developers! You can copy and paste the examples provided in this session to get started easily. Attend this session and add a suite of new tools to your system admin toolbox!

"Learn how to use the “Run SQL Scripts” tool to:
1. Investigate active/queued/completed jobs
2. Retrieve system networking information,
3. Investigate object locks, and much more!"

Speakers

Steve Riedmueller

Certified IBM i Admin - Speaker, Mentor, and Advocate, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

I am a COMMON Certified IBM i Administrator with over 20 years experience on IBM i, as well as a COMMON speaker, N2i mentor, and IBM i advocate.I've been working on the platform since 2001 as a system admin/engineer. I have experience with OS upgrades and patching, system security... Read More →

PU24 IBM i Services for Admins Intro pdf

PU24 IBM i Services Intro Scripts sql

Monday May 20, 2024 10:15am - 11:15am CDT
Room 202 A-B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner
Audience Traditional “green screen” administrators who want to start leveraging SQL.

11:30am CDT

130: Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Virtual i Partitions Hosted by IBM i

IBM i has the capability of hosting an IBM i Logical Partition (LPAR) to provide virtual disk storage for other IBM i partition. IBM i has provided „hosted disk” for Windows servers and AIX or Linux partitions for several years, but the ability to host another IBM i LPAR is new. See the step by step process in creating hosted virtual partitions. Learn the requirements, the prerequisites, and all the steps needed to create this once your back in the office. This will be great for creating a virtual partition to test your 7.5 upgradeI

Learning Objectives:
1) Understand the relationship between all the components of a virtual LPAR. 2) How to create virtual storage. 3) How to use this knowledge back at your shop to build your own.

Speakers

Pete Massiello

IBM i Advisor, Massiello Holding Corp.

Pete Massiello has been working with the AS/400, iSeries, IBM i since 1989, focusing on systems management and technical support. He has held numerous technical positions through out his career. He is the President of iTech Solutions Group, an IBM Premier Business Partner delivering... Read More →

Step By Step Guide to Creating Virtual i Partitions Hosted by IBM i 2024 pdf

Monday May 20, 2024 11:30am - 12:30pm CDT
Meeting Room 201A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Award SILVER

11:30am CDT

196: Live Demo of the New IBM Navigator for i

The IBM Navigator has been around for a very long time, the good news, a brand new version has just been delivered that re-images Navigator from the ground up. Really, the only thing that the same is the Title. The User interaction, tables, data , architecture, is all completely new and is leveraging the very latest in modern technology. As the title says... we will explore many of the new aspects of the IBM Navigator via a live demo.

Learning Objectives:

Speakers

Tim Rowe

Business Architect Application Development & Systems Management for IBM i, IBM

Tim Rowe is the Business Architect responsible for Application Development and Systems Management for the IBM i operating system. His responsibilities include helping to make sure that the IBM i has what is needed to be successful both today and into the future. He sends much of his... Read More →

Live Demo of the New IBM Navigator for i pdf

Monday May 20, 2024 11:30am - 12:30pm CDT
Meeting Room 204A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner

11:30am CDT

220: Introduction to Open Source on IBM i

Introductory and survey level discussion that looks at the installation of the Open Source solutions on IBM i. We'll also review many of the components available via open source and discuss the PASE environment. If you've been on the outside looking in at Open Source, this is the place to start.

Learning Objectives:
1. Understand how to install open source solution on IBM i
2. PASE basic understanding
3. Explore the solution in the open source packages.

Speakers

Mike Pavlak

Solution Architect, Perforce Software

Mike Pavlak has been working with IBM midrange solutions since 1992 and IBM Mainframes before that. After years of developing applications using RPG, CL and PHP he managed IT development and IT for power protection manufacturer Tripp Lite. Later Mike was instrumental in developing... Read More →

GettingStartedOpenSourceV1.3 pdf

Monday May 20, 2024 11:30am - 12:30pm CDT
Meeting Room 103A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner
Audience All levels welcome

2:45pm CDT

323: Introduction to the Navigator Performance Tasks

Navigator for i has a rich set of tools to help you understand the performance of your IBM i. This session will review these performance tasks; from traditional performance management tasks, to System Monitors for real-time monitoring, the Performance Data Investigator to understand your performance signature, and Graph History for long-term trending. Attend this session to learn about these features and how to use them.

Learn about why and how to use the following in Navigator:
- System Monitors
- Performance Data Investigator
- Graph History

Speakers

Dawn May

Owner, Dawn May Consulting, LLC

Dawn has been involved with COMMON for over 20 years and has been a consistent volunteer since 2008. She's been a member of the strategic education team, a subject matter expert, and a speaker. Now, as President of COMMON, she's focused on leading COMMON as the industry leader of... Read More →

Introduction to the Navigator Performance Tasks POWERUp2024 pdf

Monday May 20, 2024 2:45pm - 3:45pm CDT
Meeting Room 201A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner

2:45pm CDT

342: Use Service Commander to manage ALL your stuff

So many different kinds of jobs run on IBM i. Node.js, RPG, Java, COBOL, Python.... All of them are managed in different ways, and that can get really frustrating, really quickly! Thankfully, there's an open source tool, Service Commander, that can simplify the management of all these IBM i jobs!

Learning Objectives:
Leverage Service Commander to manage running services on IBM i.

Speakers

Adam Shedivy

Software Developer, IBM

Adam is a software Developer working on enhancing client and open source integration on IBM i.

Monday May 20, 2024 2:45pm - 3:45pm CDT
Meeting Room 204A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Audience System Administrators

4:00pm CDT

124: HMC, IBM I, FSP, BMC & Firmware: Putting All the Pieces Together

Come to this session and dissect all the new components and concepts involved with partitioning your IBM Power Systems. Learn how all the pieces connect to each other, what you need to do to set them up, and how to manage and upgrade them. Get a handle on the various components of the Hardware Management Console (HMC), the Flexible Service Processor (FSP), and the Advanced Systems Management Interface (ASMI). Find out about the firmware in your machine, and how to make the required updates to it in an LPAR environment or on a standalone machine. Get tips for upgrading and setting up communications between the HMC and FSP as well as insight on where the ASMI fits in. Leave this session with up-to-date knowledge on these important hardware features of IBM PowerSystems & IBM i

Learning Objectives:
1) Understand how to upgrade & update your HMC.
2) Understand how to upgrade your FSP.
3) Learn how everything connects and interacts.

Speakers

Pete Massiello

IBM i Advisor, Massiello Holding Corp.

Pete Massiello has been working with the AS/400, iSeries, IBM i since 1989, focusing on systems management and technical support. He has held numerous technical positions through out his career. He is the President of iTech Solutions Group, an IBM Premier Business Partner delivering... Read More →

Putting the pieces together HMC, FSP, firmware, ASMI, and OS 2024 pdf

Monday May 20, 2024 4:00pm - 5:00pm CDT
Meeting Room 203C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Award GOLD
Audience If you have an HMC at your location, this is the session to learn how to manage it.

4:00pm CDT

208: IBM i Navigator an Administrators View

IBM Navigator for i is the web based interface for accessing, managing, and monitoring your IBM i. A brand new versions has been released. This session will look at how to get started, how to best leverage this interface for one users or an entire company. We will look at some of the administrative features added to New Nav to help with rolling this out to many users. This include how to set up TLS for you connections and how to limit select users from working with areas within the interface, and some key function that an admin will for sure find useful.

Speakers

Ann Wilkerson

Software Developer, IBM

Ann Wilkerson is the technical team lead for Navigator for i and a developer for IBM i Services.

Navigator for i an Admin View pdf

Monday May 20, 2024 4:00pm - 5:00pm CDT
Meeting Room 204A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All

4:00pm CDT

410: Performance Based Workload Management on IBM i

We've all experienced the pain of an untuned, ad-hoc query or poorly written, untested application causing wide-spread pain on a partition. Learn how you can manage and mitigate unruly workloads on IBM i using monitors, watches, workload groups, and more. Learn about the types of activity that can cause performance problems on an IBM i partition, and what can be done to mitigate the impact of that activity.

Speakers

Anil Madan

Sr. Managing Consultant, IBM

Anil Madan is a Senior IBM i Performance Consultant with specialization in system, application and Db2 for i performance management. He is an IBM certified Thought Leader Technical Specialist and an IBM certified Executive Project Manager. Working out of the IBM Expert Labs in Rochester... Read More →

Performance Based Workload Management on IBM i pdf

Monday May 20, 2024 4:00pm - 5:00pm CDT
Meeting Room 203B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All

5:15pm CDT

247: Best Practices for Collecting Performance Data with Collection Services

IBM i performance data collection using Collection Services is enabled by default, but you may still be using default configuration settings. In this session, you will learn why you may want to adjust the Collection Services configuration settings for your performance analysis or trending needs.

Learning Objectives:
1. How to use Navigator for i to configure Collection Services
2. Recommendations for changing default configuration settings

Speakers

Shauna Rollings

IBM i Performance Tools & High Availability Development, IBM

Shauna joined the IBM i development team in 2008. She has developed and supported IBM i performance data collector tools throughout her entire IBM career. From the very beginning of the Db2 Mirror for i project, she has also been the technical team lead for the Db2 Mirror Configuration... Read More →

247 CollectionServicesBestPractices pdf

Monday May 20, 2024 5:15pm - 5:35pm CDT
Meeting Room 103A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All

5:50pm CDT

239: IBM i Event Monitoring with Manzan

In this session, we will explore a new tool for monitoring the system. Manzan provides a gateway to making IBM i watch facilities easily consumable by user applications, external resources, and/or open source technologies. Identified use cases include:

Monitoring system events for Kafka, ELK, SMS, FluentD, Grafana Loki, or AI
More comprehensive integration with syslog facilities
Queryable system events
Consolidated auditing/reporting activity.
In short, this project aims to make IBM i more integrated with infrastructure monitoring of a heterogeneous IT infrastructure, whether on-prem or cloud.

Speakers

Jesse Gorzinski

Business Architect, IBM

Jesse Gorzinski works for the IBM i development lab in Rochester, MN. He is a Senior Business Architect and Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM) responsible for open source technologies on the platform. Jesse, who was doing RPG programming at the age of 18, is an expert on application... Read More →

Monday May 20, 2024 5:50pm - 6:10pm CDT
Meeting Room 103A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Audience System administrators looking for a way to monitor for various system events

5:50pm CDT

388: Understanding the Various Ways to Save Your IBM i

Understand the different ways to save your system, using BRMS, Flash Copy, or traditional native commands. Tips will be given along the way on best practices, using the console, and ensuring you have what it takes to recover.

Learning Objectives:
1) What each Save command does
2) How to run a full system save
3) What can Flash Copy do for you?

Speakers

Pete Massiello

IBM i Advisor, Massiello Holding Corp.

Pete Massiello has been working with the AS/400, iSeries, IBM i since 1989, focusing on systems management and technical support. He has held numerous technical positions through out his career. He is the President of iTech Solutions Group, an IBM Premier Business Partner delivering... Read More →

Basics of A Full System Save Pete 2024 pdf

Monday May 20, 2024 5:50pm - 6:10pm CDT
Meeting Room 201B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner
Audience Anyone responsible for backing up their system.

8:00am CDT

100: IBM i OS and Power System Upgrade Testing

Focusing on the unique needs of IBM i environments we look at the testing needed for system and OS upgrades/migrations. From strategic test management and planning to risk management and resource allocation. Concepts covered include how to identify testing points, determine risk, and implement responsible quality assurance. Updated to include templates and planning examples.

Learning Objectives:

Understanding testing strategies, tactics, and design.
Determine risks to system quality.
Aligning testing with risk exposure.
When to use risk based testing, static testing, behavioral testing, or structural testing for best results.

Speakers

Yvonne Enselman

Principal Architect for Quality Assurance on IBM i, Yvonne Enselman Professional Services

I am a Quality Assurance, Project Management, and Professional Services expert.Named IBM Champion 2024I have twenty-five years of experience in the IBM i industry starting in application development, transitioning through quality assurance, and into management. My passion has been... Read More →

Tuesday May 21, 2024 8:00am - 9:00am CDT
Meeting Room 204A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Audience Audience: IT department personal who want to deliver solid testing for upgrades. Any system administrator who is concerned about the testing their system is subjected to. Consultants who are in the upgrade/hardware/admin sphere and want to enhance their testing offering. QA professionals who want understand what the technical team is testing and evaluating before hand off.

8:00am CDT

129: Elevate Your IBM i Game: Transforming Bad Habits into Best

Best Practices is all about meeting IBM system compliance to achieve optimal results. Don’t let old myths or newly formed bad habits be the difference between success or a failure in service delivery. This session will examine V7R4/R5 System configurations, BRMS Backups, Disaster Recovery, and Security Management. Examine assumptions, technical gaps, blunders, and recommendations. Hear actual lessons learned so you do not make the same IBM i assumptions others have made. IT is not a game of chance

Learning Objectives:

Speakers

Richard Dolewski

VP, Enterprise Solutions, Connectria

Richard is a recognized SME and award-winning industry speaker specializing in, Cloud Computing Architecture, Business Resiliency, Disaster Recovery Planning and Backup & Recovery Program Design. He leads organizations through the new era of technology, achieving the desired, successful... Read More →

Josh Patterson

129 Elevate Your IBM i Game Transforming Bad Habits into Best PowerUp Dallas Final pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 8:00am - 9:00am CDT
Room 202 A-B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Award SILVER

9:15am CDT

166: Understand your IBM i Performance Signature

IBM i often runs well with little or no focus on the performance of the system. But what if something unexpected does occur? If you understand the performance signature of your system when it is running well, it becomes much easier to identify problems if something goes wrong. This session will show you how to use the Performance Data Investigator to understand your day-to-day performance signature, as well as Graph History to understand long-term trends over weeks, months, and years.

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn how to interpret performance charts in PDI
2. Understand what wait metrics mean
3. Learn how to review historical performance data

Speakers

Dawn May

Owner, Dawn May Consulting, LLC

Dawn has been involved with COMMON for over 20 years and has been a consistent volunteer since 2008. She's been a member of the strategic education team, a subject matter expert, and a speaker. Now, as President of COMMON, she's focused on leading COMMON as the industry leader of... Read More →

Understand Your IBM i Performance Signature POWERUp2024 pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 9:15am - 10:15am CDT
Meeting Room 201A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Audience System administrators

10:30am CDT

117: Managing IBM i PTFs

What are PTFs? Why do I need them? How do I get them? Which ones do I need? Does my technology really need a refresh? In this session we will describe PTFs, Cumultative PTFs, and other PTF Groups. We'll discuss how to find out what you have, how to get them, and how to put them in place. We'll help you determine what PTF strategy is the one for you and your system.

Learning Objectives:
1. What PTFs, and PTF Groups are and why you need them.
2. How to get PTFs and load them onto IBM i.
3. The use of Virtual Image Catalogs and Virtual DVD drives to save time and problems in the PTF process.
4. How to determine which PTFs you need for your system.

Speakers

Larry Bolhuis

Cloud and Datacenter Engineer, IBM Champion, Service Express Inc.

Larry has grown up with computers since his father became a CE in 1967. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Calvin College in 1982 and soon after began working on IBM midrange equipment with the S/34 and S/36. Larry began working on the As/400 at its introduction In 1988.After spending many years as a developer Larry began working on communications, networking, and systems management tasks. Years of... Read More →

Managing IBM i Fix Information [PTFs} pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 10:30am - 11:30am CDT
Meeting Room 101 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Award SILVER
Audience This session is for you if you are the person in charge of administering IBM i.

10:30am CDT

372: Accessing the IBM i with Rest

Why not use Rest for all connections to the IBM i ? With the new Remote System Explorer, you can establish a secure connection with any IBMi, and request and interact with the IBM i using only Rest as the method. The RSE support allows custom request (CL, SQL) as well as some predefined actions leveraging only the Rest protocol. We will leverage Live demos to show this support in action to help you understand the possibilities.

Speakers

Tim Rowe

Business Architect Application Development & Systems Management for IBM i, IBM

Tim Rowe is the Business Architect responsible for Application Development and Systems Management for the IBM i operating system. His responsibilities include helping to make sure that the IBM i has what is needed to be successful both today and into the future. He sends much of his... Read More →

Access the IBM i with Rest pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 10:30am - 11:30am CDT
Meeting Room 102 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All

2:45pm CDT

162: Where to Start with Open Source Package Management

As more and more development teams embrace Open Source technologies on the IBM i OS it will be important that Systems Administrators know the basics of managing these packages on the IBM i OS. This session will predominantly look at the Open Source Package Management capabilities included with IBM i Access Client Solutions as the go to environment for those who are not themselves using the Open Source packages.

Learning Objectives:
As a Systems Administrator become familiar with Open Source Package Management on the IBM i OS.

Speakers

Wayne Bowers

Software Engineer, IBM

Wayne Bowers has been with IBM since 1997, where he works with the IBM i Global Support Center in Rochester MN. He is an Advisory Software Engineer specializing in the support of the IBM i Access (aka Client Access) products, Console, the TCP Telnet communications server, and the... Read More →

OSPM Start PowerUp24 pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 2:45pm - 3:45pm CDT
Meeting Room 201A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Audience IBM i System Administrators who need to manage making Open Source technology packages avaialble on the IBM i.

4:00pm CDT

301: Navigator for i - A Developer's Guide

Do you think that Navigator for i is just for system administrators? Think again! Navigator for i is a powerful tool for all IBM i users, including developers. In this session, you will get an overview of how Navigator for i works and learn about specific functions that developers can use to make their lives easier.

Learning Objectives:
1. Understand how to configure Navigator for i
2. Understand what functions Navigator for i provides to developers
3. Understand how Navigator for i interfaces with other IBM products

Speakers

Ann Wilkerson

Software Developer, IBM

Ann Wilkerson is the technical team lead for Navigator for i and a developer for IBM i Services.

Navigator for i A Developer's Perspective pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 4:00pm - 5:00pm CDT
Meeting Room 203C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner
Audience IBM i developers with any level of comfort with Navigator for i

4:00pm CDT

412: IBM i Proactive Performance Preparation

No one plans to have a performance problem. When it next happens to you, will you have the information necessary to identify the root cause of the problem? This session will show you how to be prepared in the event of an unplanned performance problem. It will also discuss ways to avoid that problem from happening in the first place, and how to be notified as soon as possible that a problem may be starting.

Learning Objectives:
1. learn how to configure IBM i performance tools to have the data you need when a problem happens
2. learn how to get notified of potential problems

Speakers

Anil Madan

Sr. Managing Consultant, IBM

Anil Madan is a Senior IBM i Performance Consultant with specialization in system, application and Db2 for i performance management. He is an IBM certified Thought Leader Technical Specialist and an IBM certified Executive Project Manager. Working out of the IBM Expert Labs in Rochester... Read More →

IBM i Proactive Performance Preparation pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 4:00pm - 5:00pm CDT
Meeting Room 203B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All

5:15pm CDT

200: 20 Tips in 20 Minutes

In my work with real-world environments, I have found a number of very common configuration settings that are not optimal for today's environment. Whether it be system values, job descriptions, memory pools, many shops have configuration settings at the system default value, or settings that were done years ago.

This session is a fast-paced session covering 20 configuration tips in 20 minutes.

Speakers

Dawn May

Owner, Dawn May Consulting, LLC

Dawn has been involved with COMMON for over 20 years and has been a consistent volunteer since 2008. She's been a member of the strategic education team, a subject matter expert, and a speaker. Now, as President of COMMON, she's focused on leading COMMON as the industry leader of... Read More →

20 Tips in 20 Minutes POWERUp2024 pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 5:15pm - 5:35pm CDT
Meeting Room 204A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Award SILVER

5:15pm CDT

205: Logging options for Rest APIs on IBM i

The IWS Rest API support has some exciting new logging options that has been recently added. With the new options you can now easily have tools like Splunk or Elastic Stack, or others, as you can now create a JSON based log file with Lots of additional details to help you better understand your API work flow and who is making connections.

Learning Objectives:

Speakers

Tim Rowe

Business Architect Application Development & Systems Management for IBM i, IBM

Tim Rowe is the Business Architect responsible for Application Development and Systems Management for the IBM i operating system. His responsibilities include helping to make sure that the IBM i has what is needed to be successful both today and into the future. He sends much of his... Read More →

Logging options for Rest APIs on IBM i pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 5:15pm - 5:35pm CDT
Meeting Room 101 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All

5:50pm CDT

212: Using System Monitors in IBM Navigator for i

Learn how to create and work with System Monitors in IBM Navigator for i. Also learn how to use the Performance Data Investigator (PDI) visualization tool to view System Monitor data.

Learning Objectives:
1. How to create a System Monitor
2. How to view system monitor data

Speakers

Shauna Rollings

IBM i Performance Tools & High Availability Development, IBM

Shauna joined the IBM i development team in 2008. She has developed and supported IBM i performance data collector tools throughout her entire IBM career. From the very beginning of the Db2 Mirror for i project, she has also been the technical team lead for the Db2 Mirror Configuration... Read More →

212 UsingSystemMonitorsNavigator pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 5:50pm - 6:10pm CDT
Meeting Room 201B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Audience System Administrators looking to take advantage of the performance monitoring capabilities of IBM i.

5:50pm CDT

319: Insights into Database Performance with the Performance Data Investigator

While the SQL Performance Center is the "go to" tool for understanding database performance, you can also gain insights into database performance with the Performance Data Investigator (PDI). PDI has charts that allow you to visualize database performance data in graphical form. In addition, Collection Services collects SQL job-level performance metrics. Attend this short session to learn about how to use PDI to graphically view your database performance metrics and get some tips on what those metrics mean.

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn how to use the IBM i performance tasks to view database-related metrics
2. Learn how IBM i performance data can be helpful in determining if a potential performance problem is related to the database.
3. Learn how to gain insights into the plan cache with PDI

Speakers

Dawn May

Owner, Dawn May Consulting, LLC

Dawn has been involved with COMMON for over 20 years and has been a consistent volunteer since 2008. She's been a member of the strategic education team, a subject matter expert, and a speaker. Now, as President of COMMON, she's focused on leading COMMON as the industry leader of... Read More →

Insights into DB Performance with PDI POWERUp2024 pdf

Tuesday May 21, 2024 5:50pm - 6:10pm CDT
Meeting Room 204A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner
Audience Administrators who want greater insight into Db2 performance by using the Performance Data Investigator.

8:00am CDT

118: Daily Care and Feeding of IBM i

IBM i and IBM Power Systems combine to deliver a fabulously reliable environment. The operating system has rich work management capability and strong error reporting. Despite that you shouldn't ignore it or you will eventually find yourself dealing with something serious. In this session we'll cover the things you need to watch and understand allowing you to deal with them before they become serious issues.

Learning Objectives:
1) Learn where to look and what to look for to know how your system is running.
2) Learn what to configure for automatic reporting of errors and problem.
3) Learn the points at which you need to begin to apply effort well before issues occur.
4) Be able to tell management: "Yes our IBM i is running well!"

Speakers

Larry Bolhuis

Cloud and Datacenter Engineer, IBM Champion, Service Express Inc.

Larry has grown up with computers since his father became a CE in 1967. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Calvin College in 1982 and soon after began working on IBM midrange equipment with the S/34 and S/36. Larry began working on the As/400 at its introduction In 1988.After spending many years as a developer Larry began working on communications, networking, and systems management tasks. Years of... Read More →

Daily Care and Feeding of IBM i pdf

Wednesday May 22, 2024 8:00am - 9:00am CDT
Meeting Room 101 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Award GOLD
Audience This session is focused on the Developer who is suddenly handed the Admin hat and needs to know what the daily tasks of an Admin are.

8:00am CDT

211: Set up a Shared NFS Drive to Deploy PTFs and Upgrades with Image Catalogs

Upgrading and PTFs is easy with Image Catalogs, but doing the same process on multiple LPARs can take a lot of redundant time and space. Learn how to use the mature and established support of NFS to create a single image catalog that multiple LPARs can use.

Learning Objectives:
1. Brief discussion of image catalogs and NFS
2. How to set up NFS with real world examples
3. Networking requirements and guidelines

Speakers

Jeffrey Carey

Sr. System Administrator, Ensono

Jeff Carey is an IBM i professional with over 25 years of experience on the platform, specializing in system administration. He currently is a Senior System Administrator for Ensono, a company providing managed services for Mainframe, IBM i, Cloud, and hybrid IT, headquartered in... Read More →

Wednesday May 22, 2024 8:00am - 9:00am CDT
Meeting Room 103A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Audience System Administrators who need to update and upgrade multiple systems, especially multiple LPARs on singe physical system.

8:00am CDT

271: IMGCLG, IFS, & FTP: Your BFFs for Getting your Data to the Cloud.

Getting your production data to the cloud has many challenges, including method, additional storage, backup time, and transfer recovery time. There are 3rd party packages which will help with these but come at a cost. This session will cover methods using native IBM i functions to accomplish this. In addition, identify ways to significantly reduce the transfer time. Real life example how a 350GB full system backup transfer taking 61 hours was reduced to 9 hours. Tricks to reduce the time even more and minimize additional storage requirements.

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn different tools and methods of getting you data to the cloud, including Image Catalogs and FTP.
2. Using native IBM i tools, understand different ways to reduce the data and time needed to get your data to the cloud.

Speakers

Rob Mineo

IBM i Senior Administrator/SME, (Independent)

I started my IT career in 1984. I started working on an IBM SYSTEM/38 in 1986, and upgraded to the AS/400 in 1989. I worked for STERIS Corporation from 1991 until I semi-retired in 2022. Since then, I have worked as an Independent IBM i Administrator. My career started as a programmer... Read More →

Wednesday May 22, 2024 8:00am - 9:00am CDT
Meeting Room 203C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Audience System Administrators and anyone responsible for getting IBM i data to the cloud or transferring data between systems.

9:15am CDT

131: Cool things in Navigator to be a RockStar System Administrator

IBM Navigator for i is a powerful new tool to better manage your i environment. Get expert advice for installation and set up to make sure you get this powerful tool up and running at peak efficiency. Step through the functionality of this product and learn how to leverage the Performance Data Investigator to turn the collection services data into graphs you can use to identify performance issues. Learn ways to protect your system from intrusions, as well as close security holes such as FTP. See how this tool can help you select and install Logical files on your system to improve performance. Learn about the enhancements to this valuable tool in the latest release, while we see how this tool provides tips and techniques for better and more easily managing your IBM i.

Learning Objectives:
1) Learn how to close down various TCP/IP servers like FTP from intruders. 2) How to use the Index Advisor to improve performance. 3) Identify if someone is trying to access your IBM i with Intrusion Detection. 4) Performance Management graphs.

Speakers

Pete Massiello

IBM i Advisor, Massiello Holding Corp.

Pete Massiello has been working with the AS/400, iSeries, IBM i since 1989, focusing on systems management and technical support. He has held numerous technical positions through out his career. He is the President of iTech Solutions Group, an IBM Premier Business Partner delivering... Read More →

Cool things in Navigator for IBM I to be a Rock Star System Administrator 2024 pdf

Wednesday May 22, 2024 9:15am - 10:15am CDT
Meeting Room 203C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Award SILVER

9:15am CDT

231: iSee with Scott and Tim

In this session Scott and Tim will show, ie live demo how to solve real problems that we get asked, using ACS and the power of SQL.

Learning Objectives:

Speakers

Tim Rowe

Business Architect Application Development & Systems Management for IBM i, IBM

Tim Rowe is the Business Architect responsible for Application Development and Systems Management for the IBM i operating system. His responsibilities include helping to make sure that the IBM i has what is needed to be successful both today and into the future. He sends much of his... Read More →

Scott Forstie

Db2 for i Architect, IBM

Scott Forstie is a Senior Technical Staff Member within IBM i development and spends most of his time working as the Db2 for i Architect. He has worked on IBM operating system development since joining IBM in 1989.Scott is a frequently published author, speaker at industry events... Read More →

Wednesday May 22, 2024 9:15am - 10:15am CDT
Meeting Room 102 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All

9:15am CDT

353: Using SQL to Help Keep Your System Clean

Have you recently taken over responsibility for a LPAR? Or are you concerned there is too much “rubbish” on your systems? Use these techniques to identify the most common wastes of space you have, & plan your cleanup efforts.

Learning Objectives:
1. How to identify the big three “wasters” of space
2. Simple ways to clean this up
3. How to monitor that this does not happen again

Speakers

Simon Hutchinson

Author, RPGPGM.COM

Simon Hutchinson has been writing his highly acclaimed IBM i blog, RPGPGM.COM, for eleven years sharing his knowledge, experience, and giving many detailed examples of the latest RPG, SQL, and CL. His work has led him to be recognized by IBM as an IBM Champion for Power and IBM i Community Advocate. He is a subject matter expert for COMMON North America and... Read More →

Simon Hutchinson 353 Using SQL to Help Keep Your System Clean pdf

Wednesday May 22, 2024 9:15am - 10:15am CDT
Meeting Room 201A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Digital Badge SQL
Audience Any system admin or anyone who is responsible for a LPAR looking to increase the amount of available space, & reduce the amount of old & unneeded “stuff” taking up that space.

9:15am CDT

120: Managing Startup and Shutdown of your IBM i

In days gone by the IBM Supplied program QSTRUP combined with a couple options on CHGIPLA was good enough for most IBM i shops. It started what seemed to be needed and anything else we stumbled through after each IPL. When it was time to shut down a PWRDWNSYS or ENDSBS command took down whatever was running. We were happy.

Today though we often see dozens of subsytems running many web servers, other needed batch jobs and services. We see monitors and queue processing jobs and many writers. For security purposes we should be starting only the TCP servers that we need, not all of them. Likely we should not start IPV6 and start things in sequence as well.

Further considerations may be needed in an HA environment. These include not starting jobs until iASPS are available and starting different IP interfaces and services depending on production or backup mode of the server. We may want to handle special startup modes while doing PTFs, backups or other system maintenance.

In this session we will work with customizing that startup. We'll discuss staring PASE jobs with QSH, web server jobs and more. We'll discuss prestart jobs and autostart jobs. And finally we will also work with sequencing the shutdown of the system. As part of this we'll discuss some simple ways to know what needs to be shut down and smoothly handling that.

Learning Objectives:
1) Learn how to control which startup program will run on your IBM i.
2) Examine the various servers to start and how to control them.
3) Learn options for starting different services.
4) Consider ways to control the startup of your server in different operting modes.
5) Understanding an orderly shutdown of your IBM i server.

Speakers

Larry Bolhuis

Cloud and Datacenter Engineer, IBM Champion, Service Express Inc.

Larry has grown up with computers since his father became a CE in 1967. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Calvin College in 1982 and soon after began working on IBM midrange equipment with the S/34 and S/36. Larry began working on the As/400 at its introduction In 1988.After spending many years as a developer Larry began working on communications, networking, and systems management tasks. Years of... Read More →

Larry Amond

Director of Application Development, Greater Regional Alliance of REALTORS®

Larry began his career working and IBM and NCR mainframes in 1977, and has been working on IBM midrange systems since 1993. He has spent most of his career as an application systems developer and has been developing web site applications on IBM systems since 1999.He is currently Director... Read More →

Managing Startup and Shutdown of IBM i pdf

Wednesday May 22, 2024 9:15am - 11:30am CDT
Meeting Room 201B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Advanced
Award GOLD
Audience IBM i System Administrators

10:30am CDT

160: A Day in the Life of a Systems Admin

What tasks do you need to complete every day, every week, and on a regular basis to successfully administer your IBM i? This session will take you through the base tasks that every System Admin should be doing to monitor and administer the system to its best efficiency.

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn what to monitor regularly to ensure optimization
2. Learn what tasks to complete regularly to keep the system on track.
3. Learn how to streamline your administration tasks efficiently

Speakers

Sarah Jacob

VP of Customer Experience, Agile Technology Architects

Sarah Jacob is the Vice President of Customer Experience at Agile Technology Architects. She is a Subject Matter Expert in Power Systems Administration and a volunteer for COMMON. Sarah specializes in Backup and Recovery planning and recovery testing. Additionally, she acts as primary... Read More →

Wednesday May 22, 2024 10:30am - 11:30am CDT
Meeting Room 203C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner
Audience System Admins who are new to the position or to IBM i in general.

10:30am CDT

194: What to know when moving to the Cloud

In this session, we'll discuss what you need to think about when moving to the cloud. It’s not as easy as just moving your workload from one machine to another. Pete will cover: Costs associated with moving to the cloud, what you should be moving, understanding planning, migration, testing and more.

Learning Objectives:
Is the cloud right for you? What to expect from a cloud provider? Migration issues.

Speakers

Pete Massiello

IBM i Advisor, Massiello Holding Corp.

Pete Massiello has been working with the AS/400, iSeries, IBM i since 1989, focusing on systems management and technical support. He has held numerous technical positions through out his career. He is the President of iTech Solutions Group, an IBM Premier Business Partner delivering... Read More →

Things to Consider When Moving to the Cloud 2024 pdf

Wednesday May 22, 2024 10:30am - 11:30am CDT
Meeting Room 201C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Audience Anyone thinking of moving their IBM i to the cloud.

1:30pm CDT

107: Why Wait? Discover the Power of IBM i Wait Accounting

IBM i wait accounting is a powerful capability to determine what your jobs are doing when they are not using the CPU. This session will review wait accounting and how Collection Services data can provide insight into your wait times. It will then focus on how to use Job Watcher, the power of the data it provides, and how to leverage Performance Data Investigator (PDI) to analyze the data.

The presentation will work through example scenarios, showing performance graphs and describing what those graphs tell you. These examples will reinforce how you can use Job Watcher data in combination with PDI to analyze your performance data and resolve issues in your own environment

This session will reveal the power of IBM i wait accounting and the insight it can provide so you can optimize the performance of your applications and system environment.

Learning Objectives:
You will learn about IBM i Wait Accounting and how to use wait information and Job Watcher to improve the performance of your system and/or applications.

Speakers

Dawn May

Owner, Dawn May Consulting, LLC

Dawn has been involved with COMMON for over 20 years and has been a consistent volunteer since 2008. She's been a member of the strategic education team, a subject matter expert, and a speaker. Now, as President of COMMON, she's focused on leading COMMON as the industry leader of... Read More →

Wednesday May 22, 2024 1:30pm - 2:30pm CDT
Meeting Room 201A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Audience Systems administrators responsible for managing their IBM i partitions, and in particular, managing performance. Application developers interested in using wait accounting to optimize the performance of their applications.

1:30pm CDT

116: Clean Up Your IBM i Disk

How much disk storage do you have on your system? The most common answer is 'not enough!' Attend this session and find out where all that space went, what you can clean up, and what should be left alone. Learn about reporting, automating, and managing your disk space in IBM i. Develop a deeper understanding of the tools IBM has built into IBM i and how to leverage them to help keep your system clean. Especially learn how to leverage SQL to find consumers of disk QUICKLY! Walk away with a solid understanding of how to clean up your disk space both QSYS and the IFS.

Learning Objectives:
How to determine where all your disk space has gone.
How to clean up unused space in physical files.
How to search for object filling up the IFS
How to use *nix and PASE tools to work in the iFS.
How to use SQL to find disk users and usage.

Speakers

Larry Bolhuis

Cloud and Datacenter Engineer, IBM Champion, Service Express Inc.

Larry has grown up with computers since his father became a CE in 1967. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Calvin College in 1982 and soon after began working on IBM midrange equipment with the S/34 and S/36. Larry began working on the As/400 at its introduction In 1988.After spending many years as a developer Larry began working on communications, networking, and systems management tasks. Years of... Read More →

Clean up your IBM i pdf

Wednesday May 22, 2024 1:30pm - 2:30pm CDT
Meeting Room 101 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Audience This session is for you if you are the person in charge of administering your IBM i and what's filling up it's disk storage!!

1:30pm CDT

134: Discovering your IBM i Data - For System Administrators issues

There’s plenty information on IBM i that is so valuable for the daily tasks. Many commands, APIs, and SQL functions, let you gather information from your IBM i. You can exploit it online, or build your own database tables with it..

I like to dig into this info. There is always something new to discover. Particularly related to system administration activities: analyzing object sizing, resolving lock conflicts, obtaining job statistics, documenting TCPIP configurations, checking backup activities, investigating PTFs installed, and the list goes on and on.. All this information is as valuable to IT System Managers, as it is enterprise information to Business executives. You need to understand, evaluate, and take advantage of this knowledge.

In this session we will review the different types of system information you can find on IBM i, that are important for System Administrators. We'll see how to interpret and prepare the info for future exploitation.

Learning Objectives:
Identify different kinds of Information available in your IBM i.
Analyze different ways of obtaining and/or finding this information in your systems.
Prepare information for better use with modern tools.

Speakers

Cecilia Howlin

Owner, PYRAMIS S.R.L.

Cecilia Howlin has been working on this platform from the very beginning. On her first job at IBM Argentina, she learned S/38. And never left the platform, since she thinks it never appeared other operating system as good as this one.She usually worked on technical issues, like installing... Read More →

Wednesday May 22, 2024 1:30pm - 2:30pm CDT
Meeting Room 203C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Audience System Administrators and Technical Advisors who need to find and exploit System Information

2:45pm CDT

280: 35 Tricks & Treats

Celebrating 35 years of IBM I, this presentation will cover 35+ tricks and treats discovered over the year, including Operating System, Built in commands, licensed packages, 3rd party packages, IBM and 3rd party hardware and appliances. Many of these tricks and treats were learned at COMMON over the years and many have helped justify the cost of a COMMON conference with the value of the knowledge gained.

Learning Objectives:
1. Remember some older concepts and technologies.
2. Learn a few legacy tips still relevant today.
3. Learn new technologies and tips to help move forward with IBM i.

Speakers

Rob Mineo

IBM i Senior Administrator/SME, (Independent)

I started my IT career in 1984. I started working on an IBM SYSTEM/38 in 1986, and upgraded to the AS/400 in 1989. I worked for STERIS Corporation from 1991 until I semi-retired in 2022. Since then, I have worked as an Independent IBM i Administrator. My career started as a programmer... Read More →

Wednesday May 22, 2024 2:45pm - 3:45pm CDT
Room 202 A-B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner
Audience IBM i Administrators

2:45pm CDT

348: Architecture to Optimize IBM Backup with FalconStor StorSafe Virtual Tape Library

FalconStor® StorSafe® Virtual Tape Library is software that works with any leading backup software, emulating physical tape drives and libraries while shrinking backup images with advanced compression and deduplication. This technical session will present how StorSafe Virtual Tape Library can modernize and optimize AIX and IBM i environments both on-premises and in the cloud. Five use cases will be explored, including on-premises backups, migrating workloads and legacy tapes from on-premises to IBM Power Virtual Server, hybrid cloud backup between on-premises and the cloud, backup and restore for Power Virtual Server-resident workloads, including use of IBM Cloud Object Storage with immutability for Ransomware protection, and replication in Power Virtual Server to another cloud for disaster recovery. Architectural diagrams for technical understanding will be presented and explained.

Learning Objectives:
1. How to optimize IBM i and AIX backup and recovery both on-premises and in the cloud for improved performance and reduced backend storage needs.
2. How to migrate IBM i and AIX workloads to IBM Power Virtual Server.
3. How to help protect against Ransomware with immutability in IBM COS.

Speakers

Niel Balsino

Regional Pre Sales Consultant, Falconstor

Niel is FalconStor’s Regional Pre Sales Consultant and is a systems engineer with 30 years of data center infrastructure experience. Niel began his professional career at UPS, where he first worked on the IBM i platform as an AS/400 Systems Programmer. While at IBM, Niel was a development... Read More →

Paul Cinquegrane

Regional Sales Director, Falconstor

Paul is FalconStor’s Regional Sales Director for the Americas, and his team works with customers and partners on their pressing storage, backup, and infrastructure challenges. Paul started his professional career as a business consultant for PwC Consulting and IBM, and takes a consultative... Read More →

FalconStor POWERUp 2024 Presentation pdf

Wednesday May 22, 2024 2:45pm - 3:45pm CDT
Meeting Room 203B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Audience Both sellers and technical audience offering solutions to IBM customers

2:45pm CDT

142: Take Control of Your IBM i Prestart Server Jobs

Prestart jobs are used to service requests from clients in the network. There are many uses of prestart jobs on IBM i, the most common is the database server. Prestart jobs present many challenges for how to understand what is happening on the system, what work requests these jobs are handling, and generally how to manage them. This session will review all the key characteristics of prestart jobs, provide many tips to better understand what is happening on your system, and review how you can use subsystem configuration to better manage your prestart jobs.

Learning Objectives:
The attendee will learn how to better manage prestart server jobs. The topics are many, but will include managing job logs and output, using Watches to debug intermittent problems, determining what the job is doing, including the SQL statement the job is running, how to determine the rate at which prestart jobs are being used and reused, subsystem configuration for prestart jobs, and much more.

Speakers

Dawn May

Owner, Dawn May Consulting, LLC

Dawn has been involved with COMMON for over 20 years and has been a consistent volunteer since 2008. She's been a member of the strategic education team, a subject matter expert, and a speaker. Now, as President of COMMON, she's focused on leading COMMON as the industry leader of... Read More →

Wednesday May 22, 2024 2:45pm - 5:00pm CDT
Meeting Room 201B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Audience System Administrators in environments with a lot of remote database access that uses either the QZDASOINIT or QSQSRVR jobs.

4:00pm CDT

122: Tales from the Datacenter: Worst Practices in Systems Management

We've all heard stories of things gone wrong, some were just bad, some were horrible, and some were just plain hilarious! The more you know of these gruesome Tales from the Datacenter the more likely you can avoid them.

This session will also allow for user feedback where the horrible terrible and very bad experiences of audience members will be added to the speakers experiences and used as educational tools to prevent those problems from killing us. You have been warned!

System admins, facility managers, developers - everyone has an opportunity to be the "hero" or the "zero" in their company. This session will help you learn from the mistakes of others and lessen the cases of you being the "zero".

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn how the "Titanic effect" of cascading failures and mistakes often compounds a problem.
2. Learn simple tips and tricks for avoiding being the cause of an outage or disaster

Speakers

Larry Bolhuis

Cloud and Datacenter Engineer, IBM Champion, Service Express Inc.

Larry has grown up with computers since his father became a CE in 1967. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Calvin College in 1982 and soon after began working on IBM midrange equipment with the S/34 and S/36. Larry began working on the As/400 at its introduction In 1988.After spending many years as a developer Larry began working on communications, networking, and systems management tasks. Years of... Read More →

Wednesday May 22, 2024 4:00pm - 5:00pm CDT
Meeting Room 201C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Audience System admins, facility managers, anyone interested to learn how others got things wrong, and learn how NOT to do those things themselves.

5:15pm CDT

403: SQL for System and Storage Management

Speakers

Ryan Moeller

Software Engineer, IBM

Ryan Moeller is a software engineer working on Db2 for i, specifically on the SQL Query Engine (SQE) team. He joined the team in the Rochester, MN development lab in 2020. Ryan specializes in SQL, database development, and query performance analysis.

Ann Wilkerson

Software Developer, IBM

Ann Wilkerson is the technical team lead for Navigator for i and a developer for IBM i Services.

SQL for Storage and Systems Management pdf

Wednesday May 22, 2024 5:15pm - 6:15pm CDT
Meeting Room 203B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate

5:15pm CDT

411: Leveraging IBM i (SQL) Services for Performance Management

For system administrators figuring out how to call system management or performance related APIs on IBM i can be a challenge. Luckily, many of those APIs have equivalent IBM i Services that can easily be invoked using simple SQL statements. Learn how to take advantage of these services for everyday performance management tasks.

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn which IBM i Services are most useful for performance
2. See examples of how Services can be combined to do more advanced tasks quickly and easily

Speakers

Anil Madan

Sr. Managing Consultant, IBM

Anil Madan is a Senior IBM i Performance Consultant with specialization in system, application and Db2 for i performance management. He is an IBM certified Thought Leader Technical Specialist and an IBM certified Executive Project Manager. Working out of the IBM Expert Labs in Rochester... Read More →

Leveraging IBM i (SQL) Services for Performance Management pdf

Wednesday May 22, 2024 5:15pm - 6:15pm CDT
Meeting Room 201C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All

8:00am CDT

175: Everything You Need to Know About the IBM i Administration Runtime Expert

Business-critical applications must be up and running reliably without failure. When something unexpected occurs, you must identify the cause and correct it quickly. The relentless push to do more with less is only going to intensify while the tolerance for failure keeps dropping. Yet identifying points of failure can be tricky as complexities scale.

IBM i offers a product at no additional charge that helps ascertain application and infrastructure health. The IBM Administration Runtime Expert for i (ARE) can be used to define attributes of a healthy environment and use those defined attributes to validate that the environment is as expected.

This session will everything you need to know to get started with ARE:
- Overview of what ARE is and example use cases
- Prerequisites, installation, and logging into the ARE console
- Creating and editing templates
- Setting up system groups, verification options, and verifying systems
- Understanding the reports

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn how to acquire the IBM ARE product, where it needs to be installed, and how to log in and get started
2. Learn how to create templates that define the attributes to verify
3. Learn how to set up system groups for verification
4. Learn how to review the reports from a validation

Speakers

Dawn May

Owner, Dawn May Consulting, LLC

Dawn has been involved with COMMON for over 20 years and has been a consistent volunteer since 2008. She's been a member of the strategic education team, a subject matter expert, and a speaker. Now, as President of COMMON, she's focused on leading COMMON as the industry leader of... Read More →

Thursday May 23, 2024 8:00am - 9:00am CDT
Meeting Room 101 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Audience This session is geared for any system administrator that wants an easy way to ensure attributes are not changed on a single partition, or across a set of partitions.

8:00am CDT

245: Don't Lock Yourself Out! Securing Admin Servers

Securing web based tools is increasingly important, even on your own network. Is your network team wanting to close all non-secure ports? IBM continues to provide function via the ADMIN servers, but by default they are not secure. Knowing what these servers do and setting them up securely is important, but care must be taken as some of them control your ability to secure them, so it is possible to lock yourself out!

Learning Objectives:
What are the Admin servers and why do I need them?
How to secure them and why it is important.
Avoiding pitfalls.

Speakers

Jeffrey Carey

Sr. System Administrator, Ensono

Jeff Carey is an IBM i professional with over 25 years of experience on the platform, specializing in system administration. He currently is a Senior System Administrator for Ensono, a company providing managed services for Mainframe, IBM i, Cloud, and hybrid IT, headquartered in... Read More →

Thursday May 23, 2024 8:00am - 9:00am CDT
Meeting Room 201A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Beginner
Audience System administrators of IBM i

10:30am CDT

236: Advanced IBM i Services (SQL) for Admins

In this followup session to "Intro to IBM i Services (SQL) for Admins" we dig deeper into the capabilities of IBM i Services. This session will cover more complex and powerful use cases for monitoring, automation, and system administration.

Learning Objectives:
1. Join data from multiple IBM i Services to create ""SuperTools""
2. Use QCMDEXC() scalar function (what's that??)
3. Create your own User Defined Function (UDF)"

Speakers

Steve Riedmueller

Certified IBM i Admin - Speaker, Mentor, and Advocate, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

I am a COMMON Certified IBM i Administrator with over 20 years experience on IBM i, as well as a COMMON speaker, N2i mentor, and IBM i advocate.I've been working on the platform since 2001 as a system admin/engineer. I have experience with OS upgrades and patching, system security... Read More →

PU24 IBM i Services for Admins Advanced pdf

PU24 IBM i Services Advanced Scripts zip

Thursday May 23, 2024 10:30am - 11:30am CDT
Meeting Room 203C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level Intermediate
Audience Administrators with some SQL experience who want to take their knowledge and skills to the next level.

2:45pm CDT

172: Keep Your System up to Date: Image Catalogs - How They Changed my Life!

Keep Your System up to Date

Business Case:
Take advantage of the latest technologies and prevent yourself from experiencing problems IBM has already fixed

Part I: Moving to 7.4
Part II: Image Catalogs - How they Changed my Life!
Part III: LIVE Q&A and Panel Discussion

Learning Objectives:

Speakers

Jeffrey Carey

Sr. System Administrator, Ensono

Jeff Carey is an IBM i professional with over 25 years of experience on the platform, specializing in system administration. He currently is a Senior System Administrator for Ensono, a company providing managed services for Mainframe, IBM i, Cloud, and hybrid IT, headquartered in... Read More →

Thursday May 23, 2024 2:45pm - 3:45pm CDT
Meeting Room 203C 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All

2:45pm CDT

296: Work Management Optimization

This session will introduce IBM i Work Management to the developer and other new system administrators. We will explore how the system is configured and managed using IBM i Navigator for i, with examples from ACS, SQL Services, and the traditional character based interface as well. As delivered your IBM i installation work, but it is not optimized for your environment. All too often the performance of your system is impacted by poor work management practices. Learn how to take the first steps to optimizing your IBM i Work Management.

Learning Objectives:
1. Learn what objects are used in most work management configurations and how to modify them using the tool of your choice
2. Learn how to optimize your environment, your applications
3. Learn how to monitor your system to keep it in tip top shape

Speakers

Sarah Jacob

VP of Customer Experience, Agile Technology Architects

Sarah Jacob is the Vice President of Customer Experience at Agile Technology Architects. She is a Subject Matter Expert in Power Systems Administration and a volunteer for COMMON. Sarah specializes in Backup and Recovery planning and recovery testing. Additionally, she acts as primary... Read More →

Thursday May 23, 2024 2:45pm - 3:45pm CDT
Meeting Room 101 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Audience Developers or new system administrators

2:45pm CDT

413: "Peeling the Onion” using iDoctor for IBM i

In this session you'll learn how to use IBM iDoctor for IBM i (iDoctor) to analyze a performance problem from top to bottom. This session will demonstrate the capabilities of IBM i's built-in performance instrumentation combined with iDoctor's ability to visually analyze that data to identify and resolve a performance problem that is commonly experienced by clients. After this session you will have the skills to analyze this specific type of problem while having a basis for analyzing other types of problems.

Speakers

Anil Madan

Sr. Managing Consultant, IBM

Anil Madan is a Senior IBM i Performance Consultant with specialization in system, application and Db2 for i performance management. He is an IBM certified Thought Leader Technical Specialist and an IBM certified Executive Project Manager. Working out of the IBM Expert Labs in Rochester... Read More →

Peeling the Onion Using iDoctor for IBM i pdf

Thursday May 23, 2024 2:45pm - 3:45pm CDT
Meeting Room 203B 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All

4:00pm CDT

165: What You Need to Know to Successfully Upgrade to IBM i 7.5 or 7.4

When doing an upgrade to IBM i, there is more work involved in the planning of the upgrade than in the actual upgrade itself. When you have done the planning, the actual upgrade is simple. We will cover planning tips, pre-requisites, and then post-installation requirements. Your upgrade isn’t complete until this last step is done.

Learning Objectives:
What you need to check for when preparing your system for an upgrade. What PTFs that are required before the upgrade to avoid problems, and the steps you need to complete a successful upgrade.

Speakers

Pete Massiello

IBM i Advisor, Massiello Holding Corp.

Pete Massiello has been working with the AS/400, iSeries, IBM i since 1989, focusing on systems management and technical support. He has held numerous technical positions through out his career. He is the President of iTech Solutions Group, an IBM Premier Business Partner delivering... Read More →

What You Need to Know to Do Successful IBM i Upgrades to 7.4 & 7.5 2024 pdf

Thursday May 23, 2024 4:00pm - 5:00pm CDT
Meeting Room 201A 1508 Houston St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

Systems Management

Session Level All
Audience Anyone wanting to upgrade to IBM i 7.4 or 7.5