How do you monitor your IFS directory growth?

By Tom Huntington

You recently added another new application to your IBM i (AS/400, iSeries, System i) that uses IFS directories to store data. You already had Domino information in the IFS, not to mention AS/400 Access data. The IFS area continues to evolve and take up more and more of your disk space. Now, the big question is this: Do you have the tools needed to monitor and track the growth of IFS directories on your AS/400?

Expanding VMware virtual disks can be a complicated task, but by following a few outlined steps, it should become a simple procedure.

By Max Hetrick

One of the most dreadful and critical system error messages you can receive is the infamous "Low on Disk Space" or "Out of Disk Space" message. Adding disk space to physical machines can be a pain, but working with virtualized disks can also be cumbersome. In this TechTip, I'll show you how to easily expand virtual disks in VMware ESX Infrastructure, ESX Server, and Workstation installations.

Message automation eliminates the "noise" in managing your System i.

By Tom Huntington

Do you monitor the QSYSOPR message queue manually? Do you want to develop a list of responses to messages in your system's message queues? Do you want to consolidate your console workstations? Do you need to monitor your HA product?

The System i (iSeries) is message-driven. Application failures, security errors, system management issues, hardware problems, print errors--just about everything generates error messages to QSYSOPR.

How do you coordinate resource needs with business processes across partitions?

By Tom Huntington

IBM LPAR technology is so popular today that most IBM System i users have adopted it. But this technology also creates issues, such as how to integrate your business processing with the movement of your LPAR resources.

The Hardware Management Console (HMC) is an LPAR tool that lets you move resources manually or schedule their movement based on time and date. However, when you move LPAR resources manually to share tape drives or memory, mistakes that cause major problems can happen. The question is how to automate resource movement. Can you use your System i to move a hardware resource, such as a tape drive, automatically when a backup job finishes? Can you automate processor movement as part of end‑of‑month business procedures?

Accessing Linux and Windows systems can be as simple as using two open-source tools, SSH and VNC.

By Max Hetrick

Much of my work for my employer is done at home after normal work hours, when I can access systems much faster because users are not logging on and off of the network. So how do you go about accessing your systems securely?

The answer to this can be anything from using a full-blown VPN to something as simple as tunneling and port forwarding across SSH (Secure Shell) and VNC (Virtual Network Computing).

Whether you're backing up, deploying multiple Linux and Windows desktops, or cloning your installation to a larger drive, Ghost for Linux (G4L) can be very helpful.

By Max Hetrick

One can never have too many backups, trust me. Whether you want to create full disk and partition backups or you want to clone drives for deployment purposes, many commercial programs are available to help you. Chances are you've used Norton's Ghost utility to create full-disk image backups, partition backups, or file-based snapshots of your hard drives. There is an alternative, however, and Ghost for Linux (G4L) is a slightly trimmed-down open-source equivalent of Norton's product that's maintained by Michael Setzer.