Detect reoccurring issues that require investigation.

Written by Kurt Thomas

QMessage Monitor's features include the ability to keep a watchful eye on events occurring in the Audit Journal. It translates audit journal messages into system messages (with a msg ID of UPW*) and escalates exception messages for the attention of administrators in real-time

Robot/CONSOLE eliminates manual monitoring on IBM i.

Written by Chuck Losinski

Our customers love that Robot never calls in sick, takes a vacation, or has a bad day. An ideal employee! Here are six ways Robot/CONSOLE automatically monitors your messaging and resources with system availability issues.

An automated checklist fits in seamlessly with a proactive approach to systems management.

Written by Kurt Thomas

Checklists are an indispensable aid to professionals as varied as airline pilots and surgeons through to IT administrators. (Even with all that festive magic at his disposal, Santa Claus himself couldn't do his job without one!) What is it that makes checklists so special, and how has such a simple concept retained its significance and value in a world that functions and depends increasingly on sophisticated systems, procedures, and technology? The answer lies in the checklist's ability to bring order to the chaos of this sophistication. In the case of an airline pilot's pre-flight routine, her checklist not only acts as an aid to memory, but also imposes a system of sequential procedures that collectively dictate what amounts to "best practice" in the cockpit (giving due consideration to factors including safety, performance, passenger comfort, service, resources, and industry regulations to name but a few).

Monitoring temporary storage doesn't have to be a headache.

Written by Tom Huntington

I recently spoke with a customer whose IBM i system crashed. Did they lose multiple disk units? Was there a failure of the redundant power supply? No, they had a runaway job that gobbled up temporary storage, they missed the IBM i message "Storage Threshold Exceeded," and, in the middle of the night, their disk hit 100% and the system IPLed.

What happens when multiple jobs compete for resources? It's all about the routing.

Written by Kurt Thomas

Things don't always go according to plan on IBM i. Or do they? 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.

With QSystem Monitor, managing CPU and disk I/O usage is a whole lot easier.

Written by Kurt Thomas

Below the calm surface of a hard-working IBM i, there is something of a scramble going on. More precisely, it's a scramble for resources, and inevitably, in this job-eat-job scenario, there is little room for sentimentality. You see, the system doesn't care that a payroll job is more important than a large but routine print job. It will happily give that large print job all the CPU it wants, leaving the payroll job to wait for available resources regardless of how long that might take. Fortunately, CCSS provides a command that can put this to rights: MONCHKJCP.

Get a better handle on that much-used workhorse, FTP on your IBM i.

Written by Kurt Thomas

FTP is the beauty and the beast, the boon and the bane of networking on IBM i! You can't live without it, but sometimes you sure wish you could.

As a communications protocol that has been around for decades, FTP has received heavy criticism for being low-security and difficult with firewalls. Contenders tried to take its place. Amendments have been made to it; higher layers have been added on top of it. In uncovering the truth about FTP, we can rely on a few certainties....

Crossroads' SPHiNX and Robot/SAVE team up to automate your IBM i backup solution.

Written by Tom Huntington

For years, many of us have wondered when tape technology would become a thing of the past. Many data center managers have dreamt of the time when there's no need for tape racks, offsite tape storage, and media couriers. They have wanted to eliminate operator intervention for media errors, out-of-tape issues, locked tapes, and active file errors.