The IBM i community is showing a propensity for keeping up with the latest OS upgrades as well as upgrading their hardware. A recent study from IBM shows that IBM i 7.3 usage rose 26% year over year and now leads the way. Organizations clearly seek to maintain this technology over the long term as evidenced by their investment to stay current. On April 30, 2021, IBM has made a number of service extension announcements for IBM i 7.1 and IBM i 7.2.
IBM has officially withdrawn support for IBM i 7.2 effective April 30, 2021. For those that have been unable to upgrade to 7.3 or 7.4 yet, IBM is offering a Service Extension for 7.2 for up to 3 more years (until 4/30/24). Please contact us if you are interested in either the Service Extension or help upgrading to a current version.
IBM was planning to withdraw the IBM i 7.1 Service Extension as of April 30, 2021. However, they are offering a further extension though for “usage and known defect” only. The length of time the offering is available depends on the hardware machine type you are using:
POWER7/7+ - 7.1 SE until 12/31/21
POWER8 - 7.1 SE until 4/30/22
POWER9 - 7.1 SE until 4/30/24
*- You are reading this correctly – IBM has announced that 7.1 will be able to run on certain models of POWER9 servers. It is only supported when Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) is utilized on models 9009-22A, 9009-22G, and 9080-M9S. It is not supported on the 1-core or 4-core 9009 machine types though. These just happen to be the model types IBM offer in their public cloud offering called PowerVS – essentially they are trying to make it easier for clients who are stuck on release 7.1 to still be able to migrate workloads to the cloud.
Blair Technology Solutions is an IBM Gold Business Partner with a strong foundation in IBM Power Systems. Our experienced technical consultants will help you scope out different options to keep your business up and running 24x7 on the IBM i platform. Our OS upgrade services include: