Webinar: The best Use Cases for RH Openshift Container Platform for IBM Z and LinuxONE

Join us for our webinar on Wednesday, December 2, 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM EST!

Abstract
This session will show and explain when and how you can take advantage of the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE. It illustrates the best use cases and why they fit best, with the dependencies on the business goals or technology challenges.
This presentation is part of the regular technical Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE webinar session series from the IBM Labs. Find all past sessions here: http://ibm.biz/Linux-on-IBMZ-LinuxONE-Webcasts

Speaker
Wilhelm Mild, IBM Executive IT Architect

Registration
Register here. You can check the system requirements here.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Replay & Archive

All sessions are recorded. For the archive as well as a replay and handout of this session and all previous webcasts see here.

New Release: qclib v2.2.1

qclib v2.2.1 is now available for download here.
This bugfix release marks the first release on our new home on github, which features the history back to v2.0.

For more information, see the README.

New Release: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3

RHEL 8.3 is out, see the official announcement.
Highlights from a Linux on Z perspective:

• Crypto: 
• Use protected key dm-crypt for Linux systems with access to CryptoExpress adapters in EP11 mode
• Now run the AES self test suite of the kernel automatically whenever the module is loaded, as required for a FIPS 140-2 certification
  
• KVM:
• Adds support for Secure Execution 
• ECKD DASD can be transparently passed through to KVM guests, allowing full exploitation of all DASD features, including raw track access and IPL
  
• Networking:
• The qeth device driver improved handling of invalid frames
• SMC-R gained high availability through so-called link group support
• SMC-D gained forward-compatibility to SMC-Dv2
  
• Storage:
  
• Ability to IPL from NVMe devices
• Various new sysfs attributes to query FCP-related information, e.g. use
• /sys/class/fc_host/<host_name>/fabric_name to query the name of the connected Fibre Channel fabric
  
• /sys/bus/ccw/drivers/zfcp/<fcp_device_bus_ID>/fc_security to query IBM Fibre Channel Endpoint Security capabilities of the FCP channel providing the FCP device bus-ID
• /sys/bus/ccw/drivers/zfcp/<fcp_device_bus_ID>/0x<target_WWPN>/fc_security  to query status of authentication and encryption of connection between FCP device and remote port
  
• Misc updates
  
• opencryptoki v3.14
  
• qclib v2.1
• smc-tools v1.3
• libatlas is now taking advantage of specific BM z13 and z14 instructions for performance improvements
  

For further details on the changes, see the release notes.
Also, take note of a distro-specific edition of our Device Drivers, Features, and Commands book available here.

New Release: OpenBLAS 0.3.12

The latest release of OpenBLAS comes with substantial improvements for single precision matrix multiplication on IBM Z. Thanks to a hand-tuned compute kernel, the implementation makes optimal use of the IBM Z instruction set to provide a big performance benefit. As an algebra library implementing the BLAS interface (Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms), OpenBLAS is a central building block for AI and other compute-intensive workloads. In a Linux system, OpenBLAS serves as compute back-end for many functions in NumPy, SciPy, R, and Octave.

For further details, see the OpenBLAS 0.3.12 release notes here.

2020 Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE Client Workshop, November 9-14

Get the latest news about the Linux exploitation and advantages of the IBM Z and LinuxONE platform in this technical 5 day workshop. Focusing also on new solutions and capabilities, such as Hybrid Cloud, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Security, Performance, Networking and Virtualization presented by our development experts. We will start with introduction sessions on the first day, continue with 3 days of technical deep dive topics, and resume with the latest client experiences, and a panel discussion on the last day. You will also get a chance to interact directly with IBM developers and solution experts during the workshop.

Agenda highlights:

• Introduction day
• Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE introduction and client stories
• Virtualization options with Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONERed Hat OpenShift Container Platform in the Hybrid Cloud Strategy for IBM Z & LinuxONE
• Cloud Paks for IBM Z overview
• Deep dive sessions
• What's new Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE
• z/VM Platform update
• IBM Secure Execution for Linux - Introduction and Overview
• Hyper Protect Virtual Server onPrem - Differences to Cloud
• Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z - Performance Experiences, Hints and Tips & Networking
• Securing the Workloads on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z
• IBM z15 Hardware Compression
• Preparing for Multifactor Authentication for z/VM
• Best Practices of Installing Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z
• Competitive application performance on Red Hat OpenShift
• Cloud Paks for Data on IBM Z and LinuxONE
• KVM Network Performance - Best Practices and Tuning Recommendations
• Experiences and open discussion
• Client experiences and lessons learned
• Panel discussion for all
  

Date: November 9 - 13, 2020
Time schedule: 8:30 AM- 12:00 PM EDT / 2:30 - 6:00 PM CEST daily

Registration is open here till November 5.

New Release: Ubuntu 20.10

Ubuntu 20.10 is out! See the release notes here. Highlights from an IBM Z perspective include:

• NVMe IPL support
• SMC-R link failover aka link group support
• Hardware compression and de-compression support, enabled by default for gzip up to compression level 6
  

For a more elaborate list of IBM Z-specific features, look here.

New Release: s390-tools v2.15

s390-tools v2.15 is out. This release is in support of Linux kernel 5.9.

The most notable change is the addition of a new tool called lsstp to display information about the current Server Time Protocol (STP) configuration, like co‐ordinated time network (CTN) ID, timing state and leap seconds.

Here is some sample output:

  STP online:            yes
  CTN ID:                STPM46
  CTN type:              STP-only
  Stratum:               2
  Timing mode:           STP
  Timing state:          Synchronized
  DST offset:             60
  Timezone offset:        60
  Time offset:            120
  Active leap seconds:   27
  Scheduled leap second: insertion at Thu, Dec 31 23:59:59 2020 UTC

Note: STP leap seconds scheduling support as indicated in the bottom line is a forthcoming feature of a future Linux kernel release, tentatively 5.10.

For further details, see the changelog.