COMMON POWERUp 2025: Full Schedule

Unlock the Power of IBM i at POWERUp 2025!

Join us in Disneyland, California, for POWERUp 2025, the premier conference for IBM i professionals. Whether you’re an experienced expert or just starting your IBM i journey, this event offers unparalleled education, hands-on workshops, and valuable networking opportunities. Stay ahead of the curve with insights from industry leaders, explore the latest innovations, and connect with a thriving community that shares your passion for IBM i. Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your knowledge, grow your skills, and power up your career!

10:00am PDT

What's New in PowerHA

Monday May 19, 2025 10:00am - 11:00am PDT

Room 10

Learn through live demonstrations how to take advantage of all the exciting new enhancements in PowerHA with a focus around automation, simplification and integration.

Speakers

Brian Nordland

Director of Development, Fortra

In addition to his role as Director of Development for Power Development at Fortra, Brian Nordland serves as the technical product manager for PowerHA and Robot HA. Brian has spoken at events, webinars, and user groups—including COMMON—since 2014. He is a co-inventor on multiple... Read More →

Monday May 19, 2025 10:00am - 11:00am PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

High Availability Resilience

11:15am PDT

IBM i Networking Overview

Monday May 19, 2025 11:15am - 12:15pm PDT

Room 10

The IBM i OS network communications has changed a lot since the AS/400 primarily communicated to workstations and printers using Twinax and to other computer systems using specialized communications lines. In some ways things are more complex because our IBM i OS systems communicate to a lot of other devices in many different ways, but in other ways things are simpler today because nearly all network communications are built on top of the foundation of Ethernet and TCP/IP.

This session will take a look at these foundation Ethernet and TCP/IP and how they are built up within the IBM i OS. We will look at your communications adapters, Line Descriptions, and IP addresses, subnets, routes and more including the commands and interfaces used to manage these.

As time allows we may also look at some of the most commonly used networking servers Telnet and FTP and cover their basics of configuration, management and even troubleshooting.

Speakers

Wayne Bowers

Software Engineer, IBM

Wayne Bowers has been with IBM since 1997, where he works with the IBM i Global Support Center in Rochester MN. He is an Advisory Software Engineer specializing in the support of the IBM i Access (aka Client Access) products, Console, the TCP Telnet communications server, and the... Read More →

Monday May 19, 2025 11:15am - 12:15pm PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Networking

3:15pm PDT

Understand Your Performance Signature

Monday May 19, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

Room 10

IBM i often runs well with little or no focus on the performance of the system. But what if something unexpected does occur? If you understand the performance signature of your system when it is running well, it becomes much easier to identify and resolve problems if something goes wrong. This session will show you how to use the Performance Data Investigator to understand your day-to-day performance signature. This session will being with an overview of the wait accounting technology built into IBM i, as this is the foundation to understanding many of the charts in the Performance Data Investigator. This session will review many graphs available within the Performance Data Investigator and describe how to understand what the charts show.

Speakers

Dawn May

Monday May 19, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Systems Management

4:30pm PDT

Demo of IBM i ACS Printer Output

Monday May 19, 2025 4:30pm - 4:50pm PDT

Room 10

Come and join Wayne, IBM i ACS Support Team Lead, as he presents a quick, live demo overviewing the usage and capabilities of IBM i ACS Printer Output.

Speakers

Wayne Bowers

Software Engineer, IBM

Monday May 19, 2025 4:30pm - 4:50pm PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Client Connectivity

5:05pm PDT

Demo of IBM i ACS IFS Utility

Monday May 19, 2025 5:05pm - 5:25pm PDT

Room 10

Come and join Wayne, IBM i ACS Support Team Lead, as he presents a quick, live demo overviewing the usage and capabilities of the IBM i ACS Integrated File System Utility.

Speakers

Wayne Bowers

Software Engineer, IBM

Monday May 19, 2025 5:05pm - 5:25pm PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Client Connectivity

8:00am PDT

IBM Power10 for the COMMON User

Tuesday May 20, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am PDT

Room 10

The entire IBM Power server family is now available with Power10 processor technology. From the largest IBM model E1080 enterprise system, to the scale-out models S1014, S1022s, S1022 and S1024, and then last year the new model S1012. The latest Power11 processor was announced late 2024. IBM i customers need to know the capabilities and positioning of the entire Power server family, so attend this session to hear about the latest and greatest.

Speakers

Dan Sundt

Tuesday May 20, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Hardware

9:15am PDT

IBM i Network Troubleshooting & Diagnostics

Tuesday May 20, 2025 9:15am - 10:15am PDT

Room 10

IBM i network communications has changed a lot since the AS/400 primarily communicated to workstations and printers using Twinax and to other computer systems using specialized communications lines. In some ways things are more complex because our IBM i nodes communicate to a lot of other devices in many different ways, but in other ways things are simpler today because nearly all network communications are built on top of the foundation of Ethernet and TCP/IP.

Your IBM i Networking health is very important and is how most of your data and applications are accessed. Your IBM i may be fully up and running, but if network issues prevent business units from utilizing these applications and data the IBM i will be perceived as being down.

This session will take a look at approaches to monitoring this IBM i OS Networking health and it's interaction with the network, how to collection diagnostic data and how to troubleshoot problems.

Speakers

Wayne Bowers

Software Engineer, IBM

Tuesday May 20, 2025 9:15am - 10:15am PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Networking

10:45am PDT

IBM i Services for Admins - Intro

Tuesday May 20, 2025 10:45am - 11:45am PDT

Room 10

This session is designed for IBM i system administrators. It covers real-world problems faced by system admins, and how to solve them using SQL (with some help from IBM i Services). Don't be intimidated by SQL. It isn't just for developers! You can copy and paste the examples provided in this session to get started easily. Attend this session and add a suite of new tools to your system admin toolbox!

Speakers

Steve Riedmueller

Certified IBM i Admin - IBM Champion, Speaker, Mentor, and Advocate, Kisco

Tuesday May 20, 2025 10:45am - 11:45am PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Systems Management

3:15pm PDT

IBM i Services for Admins - Advanced

Tuesday May 20, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

Room 10

In this followup session to "Intro to IBM i Services (SQL) for Admins" we dig deeper into the capabilities of IBM i Services. This session will cover more complex and powerful use cases for monitoring, automation, and system administration.

Speakers

Steve Riedmueller

Certified IBM i Admin - IBM Champion, Speaker, Mentor, and Advocate, Kisco

Tuesday May 20, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Systems Management

8:00am PDT

Optimize Code Review through Automation, DevOps Style

Wednesday May 21, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am PDT

Room 10

Peer code review has great benefits but is often not fully formalized because it can be labor intensive. Often due to limited resources peer code review is limited to more complex changes. DevOps promises automation to reduce the overhead but how can it work on the IBM i? This session will discuss automation at a high level and dig deeper into the tools available for peer review, open source and otherwise, that can be used on IBM i source. We'll cover the use at the developer level with linting where the code can be previewed and at the workflow process level where it is automated. The automation tools discussed will be pull/merge requests and pipeline tools like SonarCube etc. We will also cover the limitations of IDEs and tools and how that impacts automation.

Speakers

Jeff Tickner

Wednesday May 21, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

DevOps

9:15am PDT

IBM Power Virtual Server for an IBM i Customer

Wednesday May 21, 2025 9:15am - 10:15am PDT

Room 10

IBM Power Virtual Server (PowerVS) provides a simple and straightforward solution for infrastructure modernization, while delivering the benefits of a hybrid cloud architecture. It provides a seamless and fast cloud transition for IBM Power workloads since there is no need to change architectures. A customer has access to additional application and data services as well as high availability and disaster recovery. 2024 saw many enhancements for IBM i customers such as better pricing, increased volume support, and Virtual Serial Numbers (VSN). Leading businesses worldwide use IBM Power Virtual Server for their production, development and HA/DR operations, so attend this session to hear the latest and greatest about IBM PowerVS for an IBM i customer.

Speakers

Dan Sundt

Wednesday May 21, 2025 9:15am - 10:15am PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Hardware

10:45am PDT

Everything You Need to Know about the Administration Runtime Expert

Wednesday May 21, 2025 10:45am - 11:45am PDT

Room 10

Business-critical applications must be up and running reliably without failure. When something unexpected occurs, you must identify the cause and correct it quickly. The relentless push to do more with less is only going to intensify while the tolerance for failure keeps dropping. Yet identifying points of failure can be tricky as complexities scale.

The IBM Administration Runtime Expert for i (ARE) can be used to define attributes of a healthy environment and use those defined attributes to validate that the environment is as expected.

This session will everything you need to know to get started with ARE:
- Overview of what ARE is and example use cases
- Creating and editing templates
- Setting up system groups, verification options, and verifying systems
- Understanding the reports

Speakers

Dawn May

Wednesday May 21, 2025 10:45am - 11:45am PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Systems Management

3:45pm PDT

Upgrading IBMi inside PowerVS

Wednesday May 21, 2025 3:45pm - 4:45pm PDT

Room 10

Have you considered or even already moved your IBMi workloads to PowerVS but wonder how move forward with future OS releases? Learn the tips and techniques of performing upgrades once inside PowerVS compared to traditional approaches. In this session, we will also learn about new features or enhancements for IBMi to come to PowerVS.

Speakers

Michael Miller

Wednesday May 21, 2025 3:45pm - 4:45pm PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Hardware

5:00pm PDT

How to have your cake and eat it too in the DevOps world

Wednesday May 21, 2025 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

Room 10

Often, trying out something new in DevOps means messing with the stuff that’s already working well. Or asking a vendor to build a custom improvement to your DevOps environment, which could take months. But trying something new quickly and keeping the tried-and-true running don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Speakers

Jeroen Van Dun

IBM Champion & Product Manager, Rocket Software

Wednesday May 21, 2025 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

DevOps

8:00am PDT

IBM Power's Differentiated Memory Roadmap

Thursday May 22, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am PDT

Room 10

This session explores the historical importance of Power's memory architecture, reviews recent developments in Power's memory roadmap, and highlights the strengths of Power's memory architecture going forward versus developments in industry memory architectures.

Speakers

Bill Starke

Power Processor Chief Architect, IBM

William Starke is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect for Power microprocessors. Since graduating from Michigan Tech University, Bill has been employed by IBM for over 30 years in several roles, spanning mainframe and Power systems performance analysis, logic design... Read More →

Thursday May 22, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Hardware

9:15am PDT

Lights out monitoring and Obervability

Thursday May 22, 2025 9:15am - 10:15am PDT

Room 10

Instana is a product which helps you achieve both monitoring and observability. Instana has agent which runs on IBMi and can monitor other IBMi lpars using remote monitoring.
Configuration of the monitors is done using yaml file:

Key metrics which Instana is capturing:

Active jobs
Threads
Auxiliary storage pool consumption
Temporary storage
Total spool space

Events and Alerting feature of Instana
Instana has the capability to generate an alert whenever user defined message ID, queue library and queue name combination matches for any of the incoming messages in the message queue within the specified time (like last 10 minutes). These alerts will enable you to take any necessary action sooner.

Whenever a message is produced which is being monitored using yaml file is picked up by instana and corresponding alert is generated.

Speakers

Gurvinder Singh

Thursday May 22, 2025 9:15am - 10:15am PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Programming: General

11:15am PDT

End-to-end development: Modern IBM i development stack

Thursday May 22, 2025 11:15am - 12:15pm PDT

Room 10

In this talk, we’ll look at everything from development tools, build systems, to deployment methods. Finally there is a complete open source stack from IBM to use git and easily deploy ILE code (RPG, COBOL, you name it!) and this will cover them. We will look at the end-to-end lifecycle for IBM i applications when stored in git - all the way from the developers, to the end users machine automatically.

Speakers

Liam Allan

Software Advocate, IBM

I am a developer and open-source advocate. Ask me about Node.js, VS Code, app deployment and CICD :)

Thursday May 22, 2025 11:15am - 12:15pm PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

DevOps

1:30pm PDT

36 IBM I Tricks & Treats

Thursday May 22, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm PDT

Room 10

Celebrating 36 years of IBM I, this presentation will cover some of the tricks and treats discovered over the years, including Operating System, Built in commands, licensed packages, 3rd party packages, IBM and 3rd party hardware and appliances. Many of these tricks and treats were learned at COMMON over the years and many have helped justify the cost of a COMMON conference with the value of the knowledge gained. Please be prepared for audience participation and bring some of your own tips and tricks from over the years or from this conference.

Speakers

Rob Mineo

IBM i Senior Administrator/SME, (Independent)

I started my IT career in 1984. I started working on an IBM SYSTEM/38 in 1986, and upgraded to the AS/400 in 1989. I worked for STERIS Corporation from 1991 until I semi-retired in 2022. Since then, I have worked as an Independent IBM i Administrator. My career started as a programmer... Read More →

Thursday May 22, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Systems Management

3:00pm PDT

Visual Explain - IBM's SQL Performance Show-&-Tell

Thursday May 22, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT

Room 10

For many years now IBM have positioned SQL as the primary interface to the database on IBM i. At the same time, new capabilities are being added only to SQL, not to the native database interface.

We need a different tool to understand and analyze query implementation plans and feedback from the optimizer – the SQL component that determines the most effective way to deliver the data we ask for in SQL statements. Visual Explain is just such a tool, and it both shows us graphically what plan the optimizer has chosen, as well as tells us details about each step along the way. It can also give us suggestions on ways to improve performance of our queries.

Speakers

Vern Hamberg

Senior iSeries Developer, OneMain Financial

Vern has worked on IBM midrange systems for over 30 years, beginning with the System/38 and AS/400. At present he is a Senior iSeries Developer at OneMain Financial. He serves on the COMMON Strategic Education Team (SET), is one of the SMEs for Db2, and has served on the COMMON Americas... Read More →

Thursday May 22, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
Room 10 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Database