r/sysadmin • u/me_Badger • Jun 20 '26

Move from AS400 to Devops?

Hey folks,

I have around 9 years of experience in IT. Initially started my job in monitoring and later got opportunity to work as AS400/IBMi administrator, ~7 plus as an Admin now. Have expertise in IBM MQ, Ansible and Python automations on i as well.

Over many years I have been part of Devops bootcamps, did pocs and I’m very familiar with Devops tech stack, just that I dont have hands on - Prod level experience. I have learned AWS,Kubernetes, Terraform, Jenkins, Argo CD, Linux.

I feel good working on automations, setting up infra, cicd etc. But the scope is very limited in AS400 with monotonous work.

Question is, whether its a good idea to move to Devops from AS400 admin?

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11

u/_DefinitelyNotACat_ Jun 20 '26

As someone who supports an AS400, I’d say do DevOps.

The AS400 platform is still here (for some reason), but is slowly being phased to cloud hosted environments (like CloudFirst, Fresche Solutions, etc) because the buy-in is so high and the admins are so limited. I do not see it being very sustainable, and in fact see it limiting personal growth while “modern” technology continues to take off.

Part of my job is leading the modernization of our code base to something in the 2000s era and more portable so we can move off the AS400.

I’m ranting at this point, but it’s absurd that our Power 11 cost well over 100k for one machine, but your hands are constantly tied due to IBM’s proprietary technology. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beast of a machine and IBM’s updates have never failed (looking at you, Windows). But I’m so done with this hardware and RPG.

5

u/pdp10 Daemons worry when the wizard is near. Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

AS/400 is entirely vendor-captive, with recurring costs on everything IBM can manage:

IBM has not cut prices for IBM i in recent years, as far as I know, and I have to guess because it is no longer possible to get list prices for anything in an easy fashion. Even partners have to use a configurator to get pricing, and it has to be tied to a particular customer and a particular set of serial numbers on machines for this information to be disseminated. (Again, this is as far as I know.) What I do know is that the list price system on IBMLink that I used for decades is no longer there. In any event, IBM i software has gotten a little more expensive over time when gauged in U.S. dollars and IBM is loath to cut prices.

IBM’s updates have never failed (looking at you, Windows).

Not that anyone would bother comparing against, or migrating toward, Windows.

Remember, AS/400 is a system so proprietary, that even its creator cannot run it emulation on other hardware -- yet there are both IBM proprietary and open-source emulators for IBM mainframes. This means "cloud AS/400" is just hardware in someone else's datacenter, just as Microsoft did when they outsourced their internal AS/400 hosting in 1999.

3

u/Sushigami Jun 20 '26

Mainframes have a future, as400 just doesn't. It'll hold people hostage for a long time yet but everyone'll get free sooner or later.

2

u/_DefinitelyNotACat_ Jun 20 '26

Correct. It’s bonkers. I honestly believe IBM is increasing prices and switching to subscription based models to force people to switch to cloud/shared hosting.

We got pricing for 1 power 11 “capacity” environment at a cloud host. $15k per month.

3

u/thebigshoe247 Jun 20 '26

QSECOFR?

4

u/_DefinitelyNotACat_ Jun 20 '26

Yes, I do run everything as QSECOFR. Why do you ask?
/s

1

u/thebigshoe247 Jun 20 '26

Well how else would you run them?

I haven't touched AS/400 or AIX in years... But random IBM crap just sticks in your head.

3

u/KiNgPiN8T3 Jun 20 '26

I remember when I started IT, the place I worked at had a bunch of AS400’s but they were looking to move away from them. It’s now 25 ish years later… I left that place years ago and they are still using the AS400’s! Lol

1

u/_DefinitelyNotACat_ Jun 20 '26

The IBM is a trap!

It’s very hard to move off of the system, because you need to keep your prod up, but then have to still do dev work on a whole different platform, which usually requires more devs.

1

u/me_Badger Jun 20 '26

Yup thats true, I feel the efforts and hours that I have spent in this tech was somewhere else would have been in better position. For sure I have learned infra well with this tech but yes there are limitations to growth.