System i Director Navigator 6.1 - A great opportunity to lose some ugly fat from your desktop!

One of the highlights of System i 6.1 (or whatever we're supposed to call it now) is the debut of System i Director Navigator. This was long overdue and is a welcome addition.

For years we did all our administration functions via command line. Operations Navigator came on to the scene as a PC based client in the 1990's, hyped as an alternative. It was a fat client that grew fatter with time, but was strategically packaged within Client Access for easy installation. While it could do many things that were ordinarily done from the green screen, it could not do them all. It took several releases and quite a few years for what is now called System i Navigator to be a feasible one stop shop for system management functions. It is not without fault, however. It struggles to get along with Windows Vista (just like all other software), even in its V6R1 form. Plus it continues to pack on the pounds as it gobbles up more disk and memory than ever before.

Earlier this decade came iSeries Access for the Web. It too was hyped - only this time as an alternative to Navigator. The concept of a browser based interface instead of a fat desktop client seemed like a great idea at the time, just as the AMC Pacer once did. Unfortunately, it too had a limited feature set and could not do everything Navigator could. Plus it was a little clumsy and administration heavy itself if you ever tried to install and implement it, and thus it never got the traction IBM had hoped for.

However, as was the case with System i Navigator, IBM appears to be getting it right. System i Director Navigator is what we have been looking for in a browser based utility - the look and feel of the desktop client without the baggage. Everything you came to know in the original Navigator can be found in this slender counterpart. The real beauty is, you don't even have to install it. System i loads it automatically with the OS and starts it at IPL time. All you need to do is fire up IE or Firefox and point it to port 2001 on your system i like so: http://mysystemi:2001/

Once logged in, you'll be pleased with what you find - familiar notation and presentation under the "i5/OS Management" heading. IBM has relocated the Apache server administration tool, which was formerly accessed from this port, but Director Navigation can take you there easily. While you will take a performance hit the first time you launch a task on a given day, I think you'll find the prospects of unloading that bloated client from your desktop very appealing.

Thanks for sharing. Chris.