IBM i 7.1 is going to be headed for the IBM i support graveyard very soon. IBM recently announced that IBM i 7.1 will be end of life on April 30, 2018, which means it’s time to move to 7.2 or 7.3. We all know that you can stay on 7.1 and pay the service extension fees to IBM, but I’m not sure why you would throw your money away on that.
If you believe your IBM i is 100% secure from attacks both inside and outside the firewall, then you are probably at risk. Many companies are under a false sense of security that their data is safe just because it resides on IBM i. A good IBM i administrator should be able to demonstrate that their systems are being proactively assessed and interrogated to minimize the risk of security vulnerabilities. Regardless of architecture, no system is 100% secure. However, when security is viewed as an operating strategy rather than a goal the chances of a breach with data loss is reduced substantially.
The use of Managed Services are predicted to continue to increase in 2017. Companies are realizing that focusing on what they do best can provide them with a competitive edge. This is especially true in IT. Whether you want to supplement your staff, become more proactive with your system maintenance or shorten your problem resolution time, Managed Services can help.
This is part 4 of a 4 part series on the new IBM i 7.3 Upgrade. See the first posts in this series below:
This is part 3 of a 4 part series on the new IBM i 7.3 Upgrade. Links to the rest of the series are listed a the bottom of this article.
NetServer Shared Printers will behave differently after upgrading to IBM i 7.3. There is a new version of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Version 2 (SMB2) has been added and is now the default that is negotiated with IBM i NetServer clients. The new protocol handles printing differently and printer functions will no longer work as they did in prior releases. Documents can still be printed to shared printer queues from Windows clients, but additional steps are required to configure the printer.