AIX A Month of Security Problems Before we begin my article, let me talk about CVEs. A CVE, or Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, is a standardised system for identifying and cataloguing security vulnerabilities in software and hardware. Vulnerabilities identified with a CVE are often assigned a severity rating using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). This
AIX The Year of Many Changes 2025 began a month ago. It is now February 2025, and we are back to our daily responsibilities: tickets, customer calls, and our regular routines. We’ve already forgotten our New Year’s resolutions. Let me remind you of a few tasks you need to accomplish this year. Buy a
AIX Which VIO Servers Are You Using for vSCSI Storage? How do you know which VIO servers your AIX LPARs are using for storage? There are different options for presenting storage for your AIX VIO clients (the LPARs). This article focuses on vSCSI storage. For most environments, the creation of virtual SCSI disks is a set-and-forget kind of activity. This
AIX AIX System - Unix in the Modern IT World Introduction In the world of operating systems, Unix is one of the foundations on which today’s computing is based. Designed in the 60s and 70s at AT&T Bell Labs by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, Unix revolutionized the way computers are used. Thanks to its reliability, stability,
AIX Why AIX is the best option to start your fresh new Agile Project When it comes to a new project, management usually has only one option. It must be Linux in “cloud”. Many people think AIX is an old operating system and as such it doesn’t fit anymore in a modern infrastructure where everything is agile and changing constantly. I don’t
AIX Installing & Using the AIX Toolbox for Open Source What is the AIX Toolbox for Open Source? Previously known as the AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications, the AIX Toolbox for Open Source Software (AIX OSS) is a collection of open source and GNU software built specifically for AIX. The toolkit provides open source utilities for managing and development, that
AIX Ansible AIX Introduction In previous articles I dabbled with IBM’s Ansible modules for IBM i. Whilst I will definitely be using those in the future I thought I’d take a look at the Ansible modules for AIX too. There are fewer AIX modules than IBM i at present and many of
AIX IBM i & AIX now available on Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS Clouds From the start of this year there have been a few announcements that came across my desk and caught my attention about IBM i, AIX and Linux being available on Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS Clouds, and I thought I would condense them down and show them here. Why? Because
AIX Say hello to the new POWER9 and go buy a POWER8 IBM has just announced the all new POWER9 based AC922 model and it looks great! I’ll talk about that a little more later but for now just know that it’s faster than ever but these first models are focusing on AI (Artificial Intelligence) and will be running Linux
AIX Running an Old AIX Version? At an IBM event recently, the presenter asked for a show of hands of companies that are still running AIX 6.1. Quite a few, even though the last service pack for AIX 6.1 is scheduled for April 2017 … not too far off. Then the presenter asked about AIX
AIX The Business Impact of Losing Your Critical System The more critical a project is to a business, the greater attention it deserves. Which is why it puzzles me that many companies have little or no appetite for discussing the most important IT project of them all: disaster recovery. DR is the set of policies and procedures that will
AIX Test your mksysb backup without NIM or a tape drive There’s a really handy way of cloning an AIX operating system straight from a mksysb backup. Even if you don’t need to clone an OS, it’s a pretty handy way of testing that your mksysb backup will actually be suitable for rebuilding your AIX root volume group.
AIX Basic AIX performance monitoring for IBM i professionals IBM Power Systems have the ability to run both the IBM i and AIX (as well as Linux) operating systems, so how can you leverage your existing IBM i performance analysis skills to provide AIX support? Every system, from Charles Babbage’s first mechanical computers in the early nineteenth century
AIX Tech tip: finding AIX’s save buttons If there’s one thing that I will never get used to about Google Docs, it is that it doesn’t save your changes. Or rather, it does it for you. Well, Mr Google, I want the “save” button back. Even if it doesn’t do anything. There is something
AIX AIX tech tip: Bye-bye loops – use the ‘apply’ command instead One of the best kept secrets of the AIX command line is the “apply” command. Never heard of it? Well, welcome to the club. Two colleagues and I had over 60 years’ combined experience on AIX and, between us, we had never once come across “apply”. So, what does it
AIX Are you using the correct disk driver for your Storwize storage? With so many customers now using Storwize and SVC storage in their Power environment with VIOS, it is important that we get the configuration of the system correct and supported. In the last few months, I have been involved with customers who already have their Power and Storwize systems up
AIX AIX tech tip: Userproof your scripts, or else… It must be the techie in me, but I don’t like to make arrangements to meet someone without having a backup plan. What if they don’t make it on time? What if I don’t? I know what you’re thinking: call their mobile. But do I have
AIX AIX tech tip: a tribute to AIX devices When you have a device connected to AIX, such as a disk or a tape drive, you can discover it using cfgmgr. As you’d expect, it will have the default parameters that are used for the device driver. Sometimes you’ll want to change these parameters – usually to allow
AIX How to use the SVC/Storwize CLI Over the last five years, I have worked with both SVC and the Storwize Vxxxx family of products with IBM i and AIX on Power Systems. SVC and Storwize share the same software stack and GUI. There are some functions which are only available in SVC but, predominantly, the configuration
AIX AIX tech tip: How to scan new devices with a single command There are things I really love about virtualisation for Power Systems. I probably appreciate some things more than other people do because I got to see how things used to work many years ago. A combination of physical and virtual enhancements has made life a lot easier than it used
AIX Masterclass: advanced vSCSI disk monitoring (includes scripts) In my previous article, I showed how you can use nmon in VIOS to display the performance statistics of hdisks that are mapped to client LPARs. This is achieved by creating a file which nmon reads and then displays the relevant performance data. The script I used required that the
AIX Masterclass: how to monitor VIOS vSCSI disk performance In my previous article I showed how you can use nmon in VIOS to display the performance statistics of hdisks that are mapped to client LPARs. This is achieved by creating a file which nmon reads and then displays the relevant performance data. Let’s look at a script I
AIX Is the new HMC interface enhanced or not? IBM has rather quietly brought out a new interface to its Hardware Management Console (HMC). This became an option in V8R8.1 Service Pack1 of the HMC. IBM has called it the enhanced interface and you will have an option to select it at log in. Don’t worry, you’
AIX AIX tech tip: which HMC does this LPAR belong to? In a large Power environment where you have multiple Power Systems and perhaps hundreds of LPARs, there may well be multiple Hardware Management Consoles. When the environment is spread across several sites, it can be a challenge even identifying which HMC to log onto to manage a particular LPAR. I
AIX Time-saving tips for AIX device configuration When you have a one-off command to run on AIX, you just type it in. If you have to do it hundreds of times, you are better off if you script it. But what if the scripting still isn’t fast enough? I recently had to remove hundreds of virtual
