New release provides for sending email and text messaging from any program or command line on the IBM i platform.
Bug Busters has just announced Release 8.6 of its RSF and RSF-HA applications for the IBM i that adds email support, text messaging, and advanced machine monitoring.
RSF provides an advanced managed file transfer layer for the IBM i. RSF-HA is a complete high availability and data replication solution for the IBM i platform, bringing users more power for less cost than competing products, the company says. Release 8.6 updates both the base and HA versions of RSF.
Email and Text Messaging
This release introduces new RSF commands that make it easy to send email and text messages from any program or command line. With the Send Email (SNDEMLRSF) command you can send email, with attachments, to multiple recipients. You can type your message on the fly, compose a message with an editor, or use a message previously stored in a file. You can easily attach text files, save files and spooled files to your messages. If you prefer, you can use the SNDEMLRSF command to send a brief note to any cell phone as a text message.
Additional commands make it easy to email native OS/400 objects. The Email Library (EMLLIBRSF) command will save a library to a temporary save file and then send it as an email attachment. The Email Objects (EMLOBJRSF) command lets you send one or more library objects, while the Email IFS Objects (EMLIFSRSF) command is used to email IFS directories and objects.
With Bug Busters' free InstallAid tool on the PC that receives the email, you can install attached OS/400 objects with just a few clicks.
Configurable options make it easy to connect to the mail server of your choice. Authentication and encryption are supported.
The Machine Monitors Itself
Can an IBM i attain consciousness? Maybe not, but the newest RSF and RSF-HA features bring it one step closer. With this release, Bug Busters introduces the concept of conditions. Users can define conditions for whatever they like, tell RSF to monitor for those conditions and then have RSF take some action if one or more of the conditions is true.
So, for example, combining RSF conditions with RSF's new email support you could direct your machine to send an email to key people if:
- Any errors occur or any items need attention within your high availability environment
- Errors occur in a particular user application
- A particular job log shows up on an output queue
- A particular message shows up on a message queue
- Key system parameters--like CPU or disk utilization--exceed some threshold
Because RSF lets administrators define their own conditions, the possibilities are endless. To get you started, RSF provides flexible, predefined conditions that let you check for:
- History log messages that meet certain criteria
- Message queue message that meet certain criteria
- Spooled files that match your specifications
- RSF-HA journal synchronization lag that exceeds some threshold
- RSF-HA replication status
- CPU or disk utilization that exceed some threshold
Sample programs are provided showing how to use conditions and take action based on the results.
This new feature is particularly useful in a High Availability environment. Being able to check your HA status from your iPhone is all well and good, but you still have to remember to check. With this release of RSF, you can have the machine notify you if anything in your HA environment needs attention. Meanwhile, you can concentrate on other things.
"We are using this new alert feature in our lab and enjoying the benefits of being notified automatically should a condition arise that we would want to know about," Bruce Lesnick, CEO of Bug Busters told MC Press Online. Lesnick said the text and email messaging can be used separately or in concert to give a brief text alert in the case of an urgent condition or to send only an email if it's less serious, or a combination of the two. Alerts can be programmed for essentially any condition on the machine and are not confined to only HA issues.
Flexible Journal Management
Users can now specify how often RSF-HA should change journal receivers for journals associated with high availability/replication. You can direct RSF to change receivers at each synchronization interval, daily or only when the receiver size threshold is exceeded.
In addition, you can now specify the number of days RSF-HA should retain journal receivers that are no longer needed for replication. This makes it easier to share journals between RSF-HA and other applications while still keeping the receivers as small as possible.
For more details about these and other enhancements included in RSF 8.6, please see:
http://www.bugbusters.net/rsf_new.htm.
Complete Solution
RSF-HA 8.6 allows you to replicate everything:
- Libraries
- IFS directories
- User profiles
- System values
- Network attributes
- Authorization lists
- Configuration information
- Data queues
- Object-level authorities
- Spooled files
- Message queues
- Data areas
- And more...
Two-way mirroring is supported, allowing updates to occur to the same files on multiple systems simultaneously.
For more details about features added to each release of RSF, please see: http://www.bugbusters.net/rsf_new.htm.
Competitively Priced
The new release is a free upgrade for any current user on maintenance. The RSF High Availability feature is licensed separately, and this complete solution is available for a fraction of the cost of traditional HA implementations.
Free Trial
Free 30-day trials for RSF 8.6 can be downloaded from www.bugbusters.net. For more information, email
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