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Building Data Management Ecosystem with IBM Cloud Pak for Data v3.5

IBM is committed to helping customers improve their data management capabilities, through solutions that offer robust security and easier access for data analysis. Our latest offering – IBM Cloud Pak for Data v3.5– offers advanced data movement features and a new user interface which enables easy drag-and-drop functionality between the cloud and on-premise environments, as well as improved analytics dashboards and reports.

As organizations work to fortify their environments and emerge more quickly, the technologies and capabilities provided through hybrid cloud platforms are essential. Through Cloud Paks, clients can do everything from modernize existing applications for the cloud and discover critical data across the enterprise to build AI models automatically, and much more.

With the launch of IBM Cloud Pak for Data v3.5, clients can now manage their data in a number of different ways. A larger and more flexible ecosystem has been created with the addition of two open-source databases, EDB and MongoDB, as well as the enhancement of Db2 capabilities. Companies that seek digital transformation to keep up with dynamic markets or businesses that are looking to save on data management can both benefit from the combination of these benefits. (Read More)

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What are the basics of DB2 Buffering and Memory Guidelines?

In literal terms, IBM Db2 is a family of data management products, including the Db2 relational database, and the products feature AI-powered capabilities to help you modernize the management of both structured and unstructured data across on-premises and multi-cloud environments. By helping to make your data simple and accessible, the Db2 family positions your business to pursue the value of AI. As, most of the Db2 family is available on the IBM Cloud Pak for Data platform, either as an add-on or an included data source service, making virtually all of your data available across hybrid or multi-cloud environments to fuel your AI applications. Easily converge your transactional data stores and rapidly derive insights through universal, intelligent querying of data across disparate sources. Cut costs with the multi model capability that eliminates the need for data replication and migration. On the other hand, it enhances agility by running Db2 on various cloud vendor. As a result, one of the crucial areas for tuning DB2 subsystem performance is that of its memory usage. DB2 for z/OS uses memory mainly for buffer pools, the EDM pool, RID pool and sort pools in order to cache the data and structures in memory. Thus, the better memory is allocated to these structures, and better the DB2 will perform.(Read more to know the guidelines)

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ILMT: Maintaining Your IBM Business Software Environment

Nowadays, IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) is unavoidable for any IBM customer, and the major advantage of having ILMT is that it aids you to lower license and support costs simply by taking advantage of sub-capacity licensing and basically paying only for what you are using, and not the full capacity of the processor. On the other hand, having ILMT installed in your system is not at all enough, as IBM requires you to maintain your ILMT environment and to provide systematic (quarterly) audit reports on request and keep the process of sending audit reports for at least a time period of two years or so.

As a result, our discussion provides you with details of what you should pay attention to if you want to have a complete and accurate ILMT environment and report which will be accepted as “sub-capacity eligible” in case of an IBM audit.

o Completeness To avail a complete ILMT sub-capacity report one must come up with an updated information regarding every IBM software deployment within their infrastructure. If most of the deployments are properly registered in ILMT then, at the time of an audit, your report gets validated by comparing it with other reliable data sources. Apart from this, the ILMT report must include regular scans of the virtual infrastructure. Thus, to conclude, it is normally based on the most current version of ILMT. Only after all of the above parameters are being met, your ILMT report is considered complete. It might be obvious, but any incomplete information for example like missing a software deployment, can generally lead to incorrect license reporting which in turn leads to financial risks.(Know More)

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IBM Db2 vs Oracle Database

Db2 is also known for its reliability and scalability, Oracle Database is known for its vast range of applications, tools, skills, and partners. Both databases are very stable and have good documentation and support. In spite of some opinions that Db2 has become less modern over the years than Oracle, shortcomings in Db2 can easily be addressed with third-party applications.

The difference between Db2 and Oracle is that IBM provides Db2 with the purchase of iSeries hardware or operating systems, while Oracle is only sold independently. So, you don’t run into problems when you try to troubleshoot, you need to make sure your data server is correctly configured ahead of time.

Features and advantages of IBM Db2

IBM’s Db2 has been around for a number of years and has evolved into a robust relational database management system. Despite competition from Oracle, MS SQL, and MySQL, Db2 continues to enjoy strong market presence. The staying power of Db2 is due to several advantages it offers.

Features of Db2 include object tables, before triggers, Java method support, multiple user-defined functions, and array support. There is no support for these features in MS SQL. Db2’s database management interface provides direct access to the data via SQL. It can also be embedded in application programs written in other languages, such as COBOL and Java. The combination of flexibility and feature set makes Db2 an extremely powerful relational database management system.

Instead of just supporting Windows-based platforms, IBM offers versions of Db2 that run on any available platform. A list of supported platforms for Db2 includes AIX, HP-UX, Linux, and Sun. Its ability to run on a variety of hardware/software platforms offers flexibility that other database engines do not provide. Db2 is also available from IBM as part of a pre-configured bundle that also includes the operating system. Since the operating system is configured for Db2 database support out of the box, this combination results in better performance and saves the system administrator time. (Know More)

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Security Solution Features in the Data Provider for Informix

In basic terminology, IBM Informix is an embeddable, high-performance database for integrating SQL, NoSQL, JSON, time-series and spatial data. Designed for analytics on the edge, in the cloud or on premises, the low-footprint database features self-management and automated administrative capabilities. On the other hand, a containerized version of Informix on the IBM Cloud Pak for Data platform, one can more easily deploy on public, private or hybrid clouds.

After discussing about the concept of Informix in a nutshell, one should concentrate on some of the security features in the data provider for Informix as a whole. Whereas, one can use the OLE DB Provider for Informix (Data Provider) to connect Windows data consumer applications to that of the remote IBM Informix relational database management servers. However, the Data Provider, generally, function as a distributed relational database architecture (DRDA) application requester client that supports the DRDA protocol and formats that are compatible both with IBM Informix server products functioning as DRDA application servers. 

At the same time, one can use the data provider by issuing structured query language statements. These statements include that of the data definition language statements for administration and data manipulation management statements for read and write operations. Whereas, the data provider connects the Windows client applications to the Informix server databases with the assistance of a transmission control protocol over an internet protocol (TCP/IP) network that use one or more of the optional security features described later in this particular article.

Security

User Account- On the other hand, the data provider tools, data access tool and data links, all basically run in the context of a particular user account, and the user account has to be a member of the HIS administrators and HIS runtime user's local groups.

Folder Access Control List

However, the user account, on the other hand, basically requires the folder access control list settings associated with the HIS administrator's local group and HIS runtime user local group.

Thus, some of the codes and path of running it are as follows

“Program Files\Microsoft Host Integration Server 2021

Program Files\Microsoft Host Integration Server 2021\system

Program Files\Microsoft Host Integration Server 2021\ SysWOW64Program Files\Microsoft Host Integration Server 2013\traces

Documents\Host Integration Server\Data Sources”

Some of the security features in the Data Provider for Informix are as follows

o Data Tools store the authentication credentials in plain text in the Universal Data Link (UDL)

In general, it is the data links that stores the authentication credentials like user name and password in a plain text format, especially within the Universal Data Link (UDL) file. Thus, one recommends that you configure the data providers to use enterprise single sign-on (ESSO), which securely stores mappings from windows active directory accounts to IBM Informix credentials as a whole. Thus, it is the data providers that basically retrieve these mappings at runtime to securely authenticate Windows users to remote IBM Informix database servers. At the same time, one should run the data provider in-process with the data consumer and data tools.

o Data Provider connects by using unencrypted, plain text, user name and password

On the other hand, it is the data provider that mainly connects to the remote Informix server computers over a TCP/IP network using basic authentication, where the user's name and password are not encrypted and are submitted with the assistance of a plain text. In general, it is recommended that you configure the data provider to use authentication encryption simply by using secure sockets layer (SSL) V3.0 or transport layer security (TLS) V1.0.

o Data Provider sends and receive unencrypted data

In general, data provider sends and receives unencrypted data more often than not, as it is recommended that one should configure the data provider efficiently in order to use data encryption with the assistance of secure sockets layer (SSL) V3.0 or transport layer security (TLS) V1.0 as a whole.

o Data consumers and data tools read and write connection files to and from unsecure folders

In basic terminology, data consumers and data tools can seamlessly read and write connection files to and from unsecure folders without any kind of hassles. As a result, one should quickly store universal data link (UDL) files in the host integration server\data sources or a program directory, and then secure the folder with local administrator rights as a whole. On the other hand, one should persist the connection information into the data consumers and data tools secure stores, and then run the data provider in-process with the data consumer and data tools as a whole.

o Data Consumers and Data Tools can request connections with invalid properties

At times, both data consumers and data tools can more often request connections with invalid connection property values, and one should use the data consumers that create connections using the data provider connection objects instead of passing unverified connection string argument name value pairs. Also, one should set a priority connection timeout value to cancel all the invalid connection attempts at the same time.

o Data Consumers and Data Tools can request commands with invalid data

At the same time, data consumers and data tools can request commands with invalid data, and you should use the data consumers that create commands using the data provider command with the parameter objects, to validate parameter types, instead of passing an unverified command string with the following inline data values. However, one should quickly set a command timeout value to cancel the invalid command attempts. Also, you should set a command timeout value to cancel the invalid command attempts, and use DRDA distributed unit of work (DUW), instead of remote unit of work (RUW), to protect the Data Consumers using the two-phase commit transactions.

In conclusion, it can be said that if you follow all these security features religiously, then you can keep your data provider in Informix secured in every possible way. Do you plan to secure your data provider in Informix for your business? Connect with us, to get suggestions from our experienced IBM experts of All Blue Solutions, to get a free consultation regarding this.

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Is ILMT Implementation benefit for an IBM license review

The IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) is a framework made by IBM to assist organizations with estimating and screen programming use. While that probably won’t sound significant, it’s a basic instrument for pretty much any organization utilizing IBM programming in a flexible environment.

Organizations utilizing ILMT accurately have nothing to stress over with regards to programming consistence something IBM views extremely in a serious way. It’s in every case better for your primary concern to know precisely the thing you’re managing forthright so there are no curve balls.

The IBM License Metric Tool assists you with keeping a stock of the PVU based programming conveyed for your Full Capacity or Virtualization (Sub Capacity) environment and measures the PVU licenses needed by programming Product. It is planned to assist you with dealing with your IBM programming authorizing prerequisites and assist you with keeping a review prepared stance. Clients are answerable for providing equipment and establishment administrations needed for introducing the device.

ILMT implementation benefit for IBM Licensing

IBM is one of the greatest programming distributers on the planet. Throughout the last many years, IBM has obtained various programming distributers (for example RedHat), which brought about an extremely differentiated item portfolio. Every product item accompanies its own particular authorizing measurements and strategies to quantify its utilization. This makes IBM authorizing especially difficult to comprehend.

You not only get access to fixes, documentation, support communities and training. Support brings you deep technical and industry knowledge from across the entire spectrum of researchers, offering managers, and engineers to help you find solutions to all your establishment, sending, use, and code-related specialized help questions.

Assuming that you’re new to IBM programming, you should begin your relationship with the product merchant with the acquisition of an IBM programming permit. Be that as it may, do you know what you ought to do to get such a permit? Do you realize what kinds of permitting models are accessible and what is the best sort of understanding you ought to go into? Assuming you’re now an IBM client, you might battle with monitoring every one of the progressions that are occurring constantly (for example renaming, re-packaging).

In this blog, we’ll clarify IBM permitting and IBM programming utilization choices that can deal with the licenses. Likewise, we’ll go through the main privilege records with their related agreements that you should focus on. To finish up, we’ll feature the difficulties most end clients experience when they are attempting to comprehend their IBM licenses’ models and related permitting data. (Know More)

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Key Benefits of IBM Db2 on Cloud

Cloud computing is the latest trend in the IT industry that has been transforming the way business operates. Cloud computing offers many benefits including reduced costs and simplified management. IBM Db2 on Cloud is a new on-demand cloud database service that can help clients with their diverse data needs. IBM Db2 on Cloud combines the power of DB2, an enterprise-grade relational database, with the flexibility and simplicity of cloud technology to offer an ideal solution for organizations who are looking to reduce IT complexity and decrease costs. This blog post will explore how IBM Db2 on Cloud delivers value to its users by providing insights into one of today’s most innovative databases.

What is IBM Db2 on Cloud? IBM Db2 on Cloud is a cloud database service that offers clients the power of Db2, an enterprise-grade relational database, but with the flexibility and simplicity of the cloud. IBM Db2 on Cloud can help organizations reduce IT complexity and decrease costs by providing a flexible way to store, manage, and analyze data on-demand.

The Key Benefits of Using IBM Db2 on Cloud The Db2 on Cloud service focuses on a flexible and simple deployment model that reduces IT complexity, decreases the costs of managing the database, and many more. The following are the key benefits of using the IBM Db2 on Cloud service:

Reduced costs: Organizations using IBM Db2 on Cloud will see reduced storage costs with easy on-demand scaling. Reduced Cost is important because it allows on-demand scalability without incurring extra expenses for hardware or software that might not be always used. This means that if your organization does not require on-more processing power or storage capacity, you don’t have to pay for anything more than what you need. (Know More)

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What are the most common reasons to migrate from Informix to another DBMS?

In literal terms, Informix is basically an embeddable, high-performance database for integrating SQL, NoSQL, JSON, time-series and spatial data, and it is designed for analytics on the edge, in the cloud or on premises, the low-footprint database features self-management and automated administrative capabilities. Whereas, now, with a containerized version of Informix on the IBM Cloud Pak for data platform, you can more easily deploy on public, private or hybrid clouds. However, choosing the cloud Informix helps you to avoid the risk of managing infrastructure and reduce the cost and complexity as a whole.

Some of the advantages of Informix are as follows

o On-premises Informix deployment. o High-performance engine that integrates time series, spatial, No SQL, and SQL data. o Delivering high-performance operational and analytic processing across cloud edges faster than other databases. o Easy access to the cloud through MQTT, REST, and MongoDB APIs. o Enabled storage optimization and preconfigured instance configured for OLTP. o To meet your business demands, the DBMS servers are sized with XML, and XL configurations. o Scales-out across multiple servers.

After understanding the concepts and advantages of IBM Informix, let us now discuss about the reasons that

Why One Wants to Migrate from Informix to Other Database Management Systems?

In the world of IT industry, there exists fierce competitions among all the corporate organizations, as a result, migration from Informix to other databases has given organizations some of the obvious reasons to adopt it on an asap basis. These include speed of doing things, improvisation of overall performance, etc. Now it's time to know what are the exact reasons for performing database migration from Informix to other database management system. Let’s have a look at them.

o To Save expenses

In the recent period of time, using old database like Informix might add overhead expenses to the company. Like installing other applications or systems to work in a quick manner. As a result, the organization will obviously move their database from Informix to a newer and advanced database management platform that will serve their purpose efficiently. This will help in saving on infrastructure as well as manpower and expertise needed to support it. For instance, IBM, since its inception has maintained its own Informix servers and network, by time they observed how their operations are getting limited by its infrastructure. They really found it difficult to scale, time consuming and expensive to maintain it. As a result, they wanted to have more flexibility along with the improvement they got with DB2 from IBM. They wanted to have more flexibility, as well as to improve the application’s speed, reliability, security and disaster recovery planning. In order to avoid or minimize the service disruption, they opted for conducting on-premise to cloud migration as efficiently as possible.

o Upgrade to New Technology

It appears to be a very common reason for migration, where the company would shift from either an outdated Informix system to a system that is designed for the current day data needs. In this era of Information technology, adopting new and efficient storage techniques is a necessity. For instance, a company might choose to move from a legacy like Informix database to an IBM Db2 server or any other flexible system that are available in the market.

o To Reduce Redundancy

In the recent period of time, data migration appears to be an essential thing for the companies in order to move all the company data to a single place. This will help in minimizing redundant data, and the data stored in one place can be easily accessible by all the department of the company. Sometimes, this happens after acquisition when the systems need to be combined. It can also happen when database system like Informix is siloed throughout a company. For instance, different departments have Informix database and there is no sync between them. It becomes really difficult to gain insights from your data when you have Informix database which appears to be incompatible to perform all your organizational needs.

o Security Fixes:

According to the latest research from the IBM experts, it is found out that the Informix database is one of the most vulnerable entities to cyberattacks. This is because they are the easiest to get into through networks. Most of the organizations fails to upgrade their database regularly as they do with other systems. This eventually leaves a wide gap for the hackers to enter and reveal or steal information. As a result, when you migrate from Informix to a latest database management platform, it is essential to have the most current security fixes of it.

Most of the database upgrades come with security options, which implies that the only way to protect your database is to get it updated on a regular basis. For instance, when a company migrate their Informix database to other latest database version, many users become automatically happy with the improved productivity that the latest database offer to them. The organizing categories and individual entries are much easier and quicker. Organizing databases readily implies that the information is fetched easily, thereby, enhancing productivity. If you find any of the above reasons (among many) hurdling your overall application performance, then you should opt for migration from Informix to other latest database management system like IBM DB2.

In conclusion, it can be said that one should ensure that to avoid any data loss during the migration from Informix to other database management system, the experts from All Blue Solutions can consult you in the technologies that are best suited for the type of database that your company owns or requires. After successfully migrating the database, All Blue Solutions, validate the data stored in the database and repair if any discrepancies have been encountered while performing the migration.

Are you planning to migrate from Informix database to other database management system for your business? Connect with us!

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Best places to get the Db2 containers and how they are used

Db2 uses containers to physically store data. A Db2 container can be a file, a directory, or a raw device. Since Db2 containers are objects that actually exist on a disk or a raw device, they are considered as physical database objects. In contrast to containers, tablespaces are logical database objects. There are two different ways that are usually used to take the kinds of Db2 containers and how they are used in other database platforms.

Community Edition Container from Docker Hub for Db2 container

This container requires privileged access (think root for Docker/K8’s) and only allows one to run on any of the given host/node, so it is therefore not something you’re going to use for most shared environments. This container may include features you don’t use, and may take longer to spin up as a result. I’ve tried several times with using this container as a starting point and building customizations on top of it.

Create Your Own

At a huge level, you simply build docker files and entry point scripts that create a container as you need it to be. We reuse the scripts called by an entry point script in our Cloud formation templates to make sure the same standards are in place no matter where a database environment lives. Db2 is not fully supported on custom containers, they can require you to reproduce a problem on hardware to prove that the issue lies with Db2.

Ways Db2 Containers are Commonly Used

Replacing Database Servers in Production and Non-Production Environments

It is important to think about your platform and your requirements when deciding what to run in containers and what not to. Things like patching also require a different process, so I highly recommend that if your production is not in containers, you have at least one non-prod environment in containers.(Know More)

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An Overview of Running Db2 in Containers

What is a Db2 container Db2 utilizes containers to truly store information. A holder can be a document, an index, or a crude gadget. Since containers are objects that really exist on a plate or a crude gadget, they are considered as actual data set articles. As opposed to containers, table-spaces are coherent information base items. That is a digit of a joke since it’s not generally imaginable to fit a data set in memory. Db2 centers a decent measure of exertion on getting the “hot” information into memory and keeping it there.

What is the purpose of running Db2 in containers To build your own custom container, you can use the Db2 container as a base. After Db2 setup has been completed, customizations may include additional setup scripts to execute.

How Data Gets into a Db2 container To load data into Db2 container, the data must be in a location that is visible from and within the Db2 container. All other supported loading methods differ for the web console and command line.

Why to Containerize Db2 container The purpose behind the containerize is to allows developers to create and deploy applications faster and more securely. If we separate containerized services, it will improve fault isolation, as applications can remain largely unaffected by the failure of a single micro-service. (Know More)

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What are the IBM Informix Features and Benefits?

In literal terms, the IBM Informix provides an Informix database on IBM cloud, and it offers customers the rich features of an on-premises Informix deployment while assisting to reduce the cost, complexity and risk of managing your own infrastructure. Informix on cloud, especially brings you a high-performance engine that integrates time series, spatial, NoSQL and SQL data together with easy access through MQTT, REST and MongoDB APIs as a whole. Some of the features of IBM Informix are as follows:

o High-performance technology

IBM Informix offers a cleaner indexes and improved memory management for more-efficient use of memory and processors. It also supports enhanced buffer priority management for more-efficient use of large amounts of memory for today’s 64-bit operating systems. Apart from that it supports smarter query optimization including that of user-defined type costing with new spatial data types, and shortened instruction sets for common tasks, as well as that of reduced contention between concurrent users.

o Scalability

Informix offers data capacity of a single instance with a quick enhancement from 4TB to 128PB. Whereas, Informix maximum chunk size increases from 2GB to 4 TB, and maximum number of chunks increases from 2,048 to 32K. On the other hand, the maximum LVARCHAR size increased from 2KB to 32KB, and its DBMS utility file size limit increased from 2GB to 17 billion GB.

o Security

Informix offer highest level of security especially from all kind of data breaches, and at the same time, it offers secured over-the-wire encryption using the industry-standard OpenSSL encryption libraries, and configurable user authentication mechanisms using Pluggable Authentication Modules, especially for your confidential data files.

o System management

Informix storage manager support in the browser-based ISA, and automated backup and restore functions to increase media efficiency by tape-handling utilities and also offers more flexible restore options so that your database management system works with more efficiency and offers security to your sensitive data files.

o Application development

Informix basically support SQL language enhancements, and also expanded Unicode support. On the other hand, it also works on multiple collation support, silent installation, and continued support of IBM Informix 4GL, SQL, ODBC, JDBC, OLE DB, SQLJ, and.NET driver as a whole.

Unlike it features, some of the benefits of IBM Informix are as follows o One of the key benefits of IBM Informix database is that it has been used in many high transaction rate OLTP applications in the retail, finance, energy and utilities, manufacturing and transportation sectors. More recently the server has been updated to improve its support for data warehouse workloads. o Another astounding feature of IBM Informix is that the Informix server supports all kinds of object–relational model, which has permitted IBM to offer extensions that support data types that are not a part of the SQL standard. The most widely used of these are the JSON, BSON, time series and spatial extensions, which provide both data type support and language extensions that permit high performance domain specific queries and efficient storage for data sets based on semi-structured, time series, and spatial data.

In conclusion, it can be said that Informix is often compared to IBM's other major database product like DB2, which is offered on the mainframe zSeries platform as well as on Windows, Unix and Linux. There is also certain speculation around the corner that IBM would combine Informix with DB2, or with other database products has proven to be unfounded. On the other hand, IBM has instead continued to expand the variety of database products it offers, such as Netezza, a data warehouse appliance, and Cloudant, a NoSQL database. IBM has described its approach to the market as providing workload optimized systems as a whole. 

Avail All Blue Solutions IBM Informix database system for your business today!

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How to Install, Configure and Maintain for Sub-Capacity Licensing?

With the advent of Information and cloud technology, applications can quickly be hosted on different platforms, and it doesn't appear to be an uncommon issue that applications shift between virtual, containerized and cloud platforms as a whole. Whereas, from the licensing perspective, a change of platform generally results into a change in the available capacity on which the software is installed and running. It does have an impact on the required number of licenses, as the software asset and license manager need to typically watch out for it in the upcoming days.

Who is Required to Make use of ILMT?

Generally, companies that uses IBM software is required to use ILMT, if and when an end user would like to make use of the possibility to license only the sub-capacity of a server.

The only situations which would not require you to use ILMT are if:

o You decided to license the full capacity of your servers instead of the sub-capacity o Also, if you have a contractual agreement with IBM which allows you to use another SAM tool for your sub-capacity licensing o If you have less than 1.000 PVU licenses measured in full capacity and less than 1.000 employees as a whole

ILMT doesn’t provide support for the Eligible Virtualization Environment or Eligible Sub-Capacity Product as a whole.

How to Install ILMT? Prior installing ILMT, one first need to install BigFix. Whereas, BigFix platform and ILMT appears to be absolutely free for IBM’s customers, and BigFix is a scalable and versatile product with numerous different applications functionalities. Thus, to be eligible for sub-capacity licensing, you need the BigFix Platform and the ILMT application to be installed. On the other hand, a single server with BigFix and ILMT (4 CPUs 16GB memory) can manage up to 1000 endpoints (agents) and can easily be scaled up or down managing up to 100.000 endpoints.

However, the IBM Knowledge Center provides special guidelines regarding planning, installation, configuration and use of BigFix and ILMT as it includes those of o BigFix Knowledge Center o IBM License Metric Tool Knowledge Center

What are the most pressing concerns? According to the experts of All Blue Solutions, the biggest concerns with regards to the installation of ILMT and BigFix are often raised by the security teams of ABS. Most of the BigFix/ILMT installations and implementations have technical requirements, but for some, workarounds can be implemented. On the other hand, a workaround can be implemented to overcome the most urgent concern for the need to allow UDP (User Datagram Protocol) traffic with the aid of your routers or firewalls.

In order, to make sure you don’t face any pressing issues when it comes to the BigFix and ILMT installation, prepare from beforehand by carefully validating the following steps:

o One should make sure that proper network connectivity (TCP/UDP) between agents, virtual infrastructure and BigFix is in place o Always remember to have internet access, as BigFix requires access to the internet. o Also, one should have permissions regarding the virtual infrastructure o One should address the pressing concerns regarding system management functions of BigFix o One should gain valid permissions to install agents on systems containing IBM Software o Also, try to know where IBM software has been deployed o One should also address concerns regarding possible impact the software scans might have on your system o At the same time, one should schedule a proper management of BigFix and ILMT

How to Install BigFix? When all requirements are met, and an operating system and database are prepared, installation and configuration of BigFix and ILMT generally takes around 8 hours. Thus, it includes installation of BigFix server, retrieving License Metric Tool database content and deploying the BigFix agents. The installation of BigFix doesn't appears to be tough and complex by nature, however, without having prior experience of installing it, BigFix can sometime appear to be a bit confusing by nature. Whereas, in BigFix, fixlets, tasks, relevancy, sites, domains are common terms, and prior installing it, one should always review the entire console operators guide section in the BigFix Knowledge center link at once.

BigFix Fixlets Once the installation of ILMT and BigFix is fully complete, then continue with the configuration of BigFix and ILMT using the BigFix console. Generally, BigFix retrieves fixlets with the aid of the internet from the BigFix-content-servers. Fixlets are basically scripts which can easily be executed on single or groups of devices. An example of such a fixlet is a Microsoft Security Patch. A fixlet is only visible for devices for which it is relevant. In other words, the Microsoft Security patch is only visible and relevant for Microsoft systems, but is invisible for Linux devices as a whole.

Whereas, the ILMT installer is also provided by IBM in a fixlet. Thus, to install or upgrade ILMT, one should seamlessly search for the fixlet and “Download IBM License Metric Tool” and take action to start the installation. Once the installation of the fixlet is completed, perform the initial configuration as explained in the ILMT knowledge center. The next step is to deploy the fixlets, in order to install the hardware and software scanners, IBM software catalogs and the VM Managers at once. On the other hand, latest versions of BigFix and ILMT are provided and can be upgraded smoothly with the aid of a fixlet.

In conclusion it can be said, that the configuration and management of IBM’s License Metric Tool (ILMT) and its associated BigFix Server are very complex by nature. It is the end users who typically underestimate all the different steps and actions that are required to be followed, in order to be eligible for sub-capacity licensing. Most often it is found out that end users often struggle with the installation, configuration and proper management of the ILMT and BigFix platform. It happens because the in-depth knowledge, expertise and required time to do so in a complete and accurate manner is not at all available within an end user organization itself. Thus, All Blue Solutions have developed a specific form ILMT services for those who acknowledge the complexity around its installation, configuration and continuous management of their ILMT environment and that do not have the expertise with themselves.

Avail All Blue Solutions ILMT and BigFix Servers for your business today!