Putty Fatal Error : Couldn't agree a key exchange algorithm

While working with PuTTY to SSH to Unix/Linux servers you might get error Putty Fatal Error : Couldn't agree a key exchange algorithm. Sometime this error can be specific to some servers while for other servers ssh works perfectly fine. In this blog we will see how to fix this issue.

How do you raise a case with IBM support?

As a DB2 DBA or as a matter of fact if you are using any IBM product irrespective of hardware or software you might be in a situation where you might need support from IBM experts. To get IBM expert support you need to create SR (Service Request) with IBM , formerly known as PMR (Problem Management Report). In this blog we will go through steps to create IBM ID, add customer ID to your IBM id and finally create/view and update SR.

URLs to create IBM SR:

There is separate portal to create/view/update Hardware and Software SRs. You can use below URL to navigate to IBM SR portal.

Hardware SRs: https://www-946.ibm.com/support/servicerequest/Home.action

Software SRs : https://www.ibm.com/mysupport/s/?language=en_US

These URLs are valid as on date of publication of this blog, I will try my best to keep it updated with latest URL but in case it doesn't work, feel free to reach out to me to inform about it or put a comment below.

Tablespace Management in DB2

Tablespace is logical collection of containers which contains actual data of database. In DB2 LUW there is 3 types of tablespace SMS (System Managed Spaces), DMS (Database Managed Spaces) and Automatic Storage. In this blog we will go through different tablespace management operation and behavior of SMS, DMS and Automatic Storage for those operations.

In this blog, we will go through different tablespace operations applicable for tablespaces using File or path based containers.

Create SAMPLE database in DB2

In this blog we will go though steps to create sample database. You might need SAMPLE database with tables, views, index, function, procedure and dummy data to conduct POC or for testing, learning purpose. You will need a DB2 instance to create SAMPLE database. Check blog How to create DB2 Instance on Linux for instructions to create DB2 instance and start it.

Prerequisite :

To create SAMPLE database you need a DB2 instance, also you should have SYSADM or SYSCTRL authorities for that instance.

Enable SSL for DB2 HADR Communication

In blog DB2 SSL we went through importance of SSL and steps to configure SSL for DB2 communication both at DB2 Server side and client side. In this blog we will go through steps to configure SSL for DB2 HADR communication. If you want you can configure SSL for both DB2 client and server communication as well as for HADR communication or only for HADR communication also. If you have not read blog DB2 SSL, I highly recommend to go through it first before moving into detailed steps to configure SSL for DB2 HADR communication.

In this blog we will use 2 Local KeyStore, one for Primary and other for Standby. We will consider a 2 node HADR setup with below configuration. In case you have more than 1 Standby nodes then you need to perform below steps on all other Standby nodes as well.

Primary Node : db2test1, Instance : db2i1

Standby Node : db2test2, Instance : db2i1