Last week, I wrote the blog, Manage PTFs with Navigator, to review the capability you now have to manage IBM i PTFs with Navigator. A reader asked a question about how to get other systems to show up when trying to compare PTFs.
The PTF management functions such as Compare and Update, sending PTFs to another system, or installing PTFs on another system require that you define target systems and optionally groups within Navigator.
Like the PTF support, Target Systems and Groups was originally part of the 7.2 release.
Target Systems and Groups is a task in the left-frame navigation area of Navigator:
There are two main features:
Target Systems
You use Target systems to define to Navigator the other IBM i partitions you would like to manage. This used to be called “Set Target System”. Adding a target system is very simple – you supply the system name (or IP address), and your IBM i user profile and password. You can then manage that partition with Navigator using the “Set as Target System” option.
The IBM i partition you originally log in to acts as an intermediate system and communicates to the target system via the host servers.
I wrote about “Set Target System” a long time ago in the blog Navigator Can Manage Target Systems. This post was written shortly after support for target systems was first introduced in Navigator. Target systems still behave in basically the same manner, although the user interface is nicer now.
One thing to remember – after you have set up target systems, if you change the password for your IBM i user profile, you also need to maintain (change) that password for your target systems.
Here is an example of target systems:
System Groups
System groups give you the capability to create groups of systems. In order to set up system groups, you first need to add all of the partitions you want to manage via Target Systems. Once you have all your partitions defined to Navigator as target systems, you can then set up your system groups. For example, maybe you want a group of all your partitions that are on the 7.1 release. You can modify a system group by going into the properties for that group.
Here is an example of how to set up a system group:
Functions within Navigator that utilize system groups are still rather limited – only the PTF management features use target systems and groups. Once you have your target systems and (optionally) groups set up, the PTF Management tasks that act upon other endpoints will now show you these targets and groups that you have configured.
Note that if you need to initiate PTF tasks from different endpoints, you will need to define your target systems and groups on Navigator on each system.
You can read more about target systems and groups in section 2.1.6 in the IBM i 7.2 Technical Overview with Technology Refresh Updates Redbooks publication.
This blog post was edited for currency on April 12, 2020.
This blog post was originally published on IBMSystemsMag.com and is reproduced here by permission of IBM Systems Media.