What's new for IBM Navigator for i

Read about new functions that are now available within the IBM® Navigator for i application.

• 5250 Emulation
  You can now access the same 5250 Emulation portlet that is included with IBM i Access for Web from the System welcome page within IBM Systems Director Navigator for i.

  Note: No customization of the 5250 Emulation portlet is supported from within the Navigator console.
• Set Target System

  You can now select another system to manage, besides the IBM i system where you are running IBM Systems Director Navigator. You can select to manage another V7R1 system, or, you can also manage V6R1 and V5R4 systems as well. Select the “Set Target System” task in the task navigation area to specify the system you want to manage.

• Database

  On Demand Performance Center: Added more filters when starting SQL performance monitors. Support has been added for a new centralized authority model when working with all the SQL performance tools. SQL Details for a Job now has ability to start a SQL Performance Monitor from the jobs list. Index Advisor now includes a column with the time that an index was first advised. The indexes list now includes information for the last time the index was built to allow for planning the amount of time it might take for the next time the index is to be built. The list also now includes columns for SSD and In Memory values.

  Health Center: New SQL0901 category has been added to the Environmental Limits tab to help log situations where the database engine has a unknown error and more data is needed to be collected. Random and sequential I/O counts are now collected and displayed in the Activity tab in Health Center.

  Database Management:

  • Support for new database features; XML data type columns, XML Schema Repository (XML Schemas), global variables, array types, field procedures, and three part aliases.
  • Generate SQL now supports the option to include SQL privilege statements.
  • Several usability enhancements to lists including saving list contents to various output formats and ability to filter lists.

  Maintenance Category: : A new Maintenance category helps to organize database maintenance lists for table reorganizations, index builds, text search index builds, table alters and check pending constraints. Also progress pages have been added for index builds, text search index builds, and table alters. In addition, history information has been added to the table reorganization progress page.

  Long SQL Schema Names: Support for long schema names has been added throughout the database pages to support porting database applications from other databases, and more descriptive schema names.

  Omnifind Text Search Functions: Support has been added for managing Omnifind text search servers and indexes.

• New Journal Management capabilities

  You can now manage journal environments via IBM Systems Director Navigator for i. The following are the additional functions added to journal management in 7.1:

  The Show Journaled Objects action was added for a journal. This action displays the objects journaled to the journal including files, data areas, data queues, libraries, and integrated file system objects

  The Change Receivers action was added for a journal. This action allows you to attach a new journal receiver to the journal and change some of the attributes of a journal including the fixed length data values, receiver maximum option, minimize options and more.

  The Remote Journals action was added for a journal. This action allows you to see a list of all remote journals associated with a journal. Included in the list are things like the remote journal state and delivery mode.

  The Add Remote Journal action was added for a journal. This action allows you to define a new remote journal environment.

  The Properties action was added for a journal receiver. This action allows you to view the attributes of a journal receiver. Included in the attributes are things like the sequence number of the first entry in the journal receiver, the minimize options, the fixed length data options, and more.

  The Activate action was added for remote journals. This action allows you to activate a remote journal and specify the options desired.

  The Deactivate action was added for remote journals. This action allows you to deactivate a remote journal.

  The Remove action was added for remote journals. This action allows you to remove a remote journal environment.

  The Properties action was added for remote journals. This action allows you to view the properties of a remote journal connection. This includes things like the delivery mode, remote journal type, connection statistics, and more.

• Integrated Server Administration:

  The Create Server task was added for creating the IBM i hosting environment for an iSCSI attached BladeCenter or System x server.

  The Delete Server task was added for deleting the IBM i hosting environment for an integrated server.

  The Launch Web Console task was added for launching the service processor Web console for an iSCSI attached integrated server.

  Several iSCSI configuration tasks were simplified.

• Printer Output

  New actions added to View as PDF and Export as PDF.

  The View as PDF was added for an AFPDS or SCS printer output file. This function will allow you to open and view the contents of a printer output file using Acrobat Reader.

  The Export as PDF function was added for an AFPDS or SCS printer output file This function will allow you to save the contents of a printer output file to your client desktop or file system.

• File Systems

  A temporary file system is supported. The temporary file system can be created via creating UDFS (User Defined File System) with specifying ".TMPUDFS" as extension instead of the default ".UDFS" for the "UDFS name" field.

  Allow the user to remove Integrated File System (IFS) objects listed in the Folder Attribute Information Report panel.

• Network

  IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) is enabled for Remote Access Services.

  IKE version 2 is enabled for VPN.

• Disk Management

  The graphical view is now enabled within IBM Systems Director Navigator for i.

  Start/Stop encryption on disk pools are enabled. Change encryption key is allowed when the encryption is started.

  Provide asynchronous communications between the source and target servers for geographic mirroring.

• Performance

  Several enhancements were made to Performance Data Investigator (PDI) which can be accessed by selecting the Investigate Data task:

  General Health Indicators: A new content package is included which shows the general health of your partition, configurable for user-defined health thresholds.

  View cross-partition CPU metrics: Collection Services has the ability to collect high-level cross-partition processor performance metrics for all logical partitions on the same single physical server regardless of operating system. This is available on Power6 and above servers, with a minimum firmware level xx340_061. When this data is available, it can be viewed via several perspectives found under "Physical System".

  Export: Data can now be exported to an image (charts only), comma delimited, or tab delimited file.

  Size Next Upgrade: Investigate Data can now send data from your current session to Workload Estimator for use in sizing a future system using current performance characteristics.

  Interactive Perspective Development: New charts and tables can be developed from within Investigate Data. Adding views, modifying SQL statements, modifying data series information can all be performed without leaving the page.

  Metric Finder: With the large number of metrics provided by Investigate Data, sometimes knowing which perspective contains the metric you want to see isn't trivial. Now you can choose your perspective by searching for a metric name. Look for this feature under the "Search" button when you launch Investigate Data.

  Performance Explorer Content Package A simple Performance Explorer content package is included to start analysis of Performance Explorer data.

  New Metrics: Many new perspectives have been added to Investigate Data, and many new metrics have been added to existing perspectives. The new metrics include SAN, Virtual I/O, Energy Management, Virtual Memory, and Communication data, plus much more.

  Miscellaneous Enhancements: Miscellaneous changes were made to improve the overall capabilities of the performance tasks. Examples within Investigate data include: persistent options, new collection context at the top of each perspective, and a new menu bar which allows for quicker navigation and more complete History data.

  Note: : These new features will also be available on IBM i 6.1 with the following PTFs: SI35659, SI35663, and SI36093.