Omit directories from a *LINK BRMS Backup

BRMS (Backup Recovery and Media Service) makes it very easy to backup the complete IFS (Integrated File System) of an IBM i machine, with the "*LINK" entry in your backup control group.

Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server

The whole Internet is full of more or less useful tips for performance tuning on windows server. Many tips to change some mystery registry settings are not only not useful, but the can cause serious problems on your servers. Some popular performance tricks in the Internet make only sense in older releases and are obsolete in newer versions of Windows Server. You should really carefully evaluate every tip before you implement it on your production servers.

But why trust on tips from the Internet when there are very good performance tuning guidelines from the creators of Windows Server like the

Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server (Windows 2008, 2008 R2, 2012)
Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows Server 2012 R2

This guides are packed with useful tips&tricks and detailed explanations how Windows server work and which settings should be applied in different scenarios like File, Application or Web servers. My recommendation is to not change any settings on your windows server before you have read and understood the above documents!

Domino Policies FAQ

One of the most powerful tool for the admin in Domino are policies.  Policies in Domino are not only very powerful, but also sometimes difficult to understand and hard to implement. So many admins think that policies in Domino are buggy, because the do not understand how policies work in Domino.

Fortunately IBM has held an "Ask the Experts Q&A" session this month which answers all questions about the following topics.

• Dynamic Client Configuration & Timing
• Mail & Custom policies
• Groups
• Passwords
• General Administration

The FAQ's in this "Ask the Experts Q&A" are a must read for every Domino Admin.

Have a look at my other postings relating policies

Schönes neues Cloud Zeitalter

Praktisch alle großen IT Firmen wollen derzeit Ihren Kunden den Umstieg von on Premise Lösungen auf die Cloud schmackhaft machen. Manche Anbieter wie z.B. Adobe bieten Ihre Produkte überhaupt nur noch als Cloud Lizenzen an. Zwar können die Produkte noch lokal installiert werden, aber der Lizenzserver läuft in der Cloud. Jetzt hat Adobe offensichtlich Probleme mit seinem Cloud Dienst und die Nutzer können nicht mehr auf Ihre Dateien zugreifen. Lokales Arbeiten ist derzeit noch möglich, da die Programme nicht permanent die Lizenz prüfen. Aber sobald die Anwendung der Meinung ist, dass die Lizenz geprüft werden muß, ist auch lokales Arbeiten nicht mehr möglich.

Für Details siehe Schwierigkeiten mit der Creative Cloud auf Heise.de

Deshalb keine kritischen Geschäftsanwendungen in die Cloud.

Presentation Developing secure IBM i applications

The IBM i is one of the most secure system on earth, but even on the ibm i many mistakes can be made if you do not understand how security has to be implemented on the system. I have found a presentation which explains in detail how security works on the IBM i. This presentation was presented at the January meeting of the Utah IBM i developer association by Robin Tatam. I really recommend this presentation for every Sysadmin and Developer who is interested in security on the IBM i.

Rise Like A Phoenix

Conchita Wurst aka as Tom Neuwirth is not only a very good singer with a fantastic James Bond theme style song, she/he is also a statement for tolerance towards people who are different. So if you like her/his song and you want to set a statement for tolerance, vote for Conchita in the final of the Eurovision song contest.




I am really happy that this year our country shows europe that Austria is a tolerant and open place to live.

Analyze IBM i Communication Trace with Wireshark.

One of the most valuable tools to solve problems in networks is the communication trace. Fortunately IBM i has a very powerful trace tool built in the core os, so if you want to trace your network traffic to and from your IBM i you do not need the network guy to implement port mirroring or other network analyzing techniques. But the weak point of the comm trace tool is, that the generated reports are not very easy to view and are a little bit confusing.

So in today's post i want to show you how you can trace your communication and export the traced data to the best open source network traffic analyzer Wireshark:

Link Collection for IBM i 7.2 and Power 8

There are so many resources about the new release of IBM i. In this blog post i want to build a list with the best links to all information sources regarding V7R2. Please leave a comment if you know links with valuable informations which are missing in my list.

Announcement letter V7R2

Documentation

IBM Knowledge Center V7R2  
IBM Technology Update Wiki
IBM i 7.2 – The great beyond 
IBM i 7.2 and IBM POWER8
IBM i information overview and what's new