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Sorlaris and AIX
- Thread starter dandan123
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AIX is quite different from Solaris (and all other Unix's). The commands are different but the underlying areas (e.g, VMM) are the same (though some may be implemented differenty). For example, if you are looking at the run queue, AIX allows the number to be 4 (or 5) times the number of CPUs, while Solaris allows 2 (or 3) times the number of CPUs. There are other areas like this, too. Swap is also handled differently in AIX than Solaris, and /tmp is a true filesystem in AIX unlike Solaris.
The LVM (logical volume manager) is first-rate compared to Solaris DiskSuite (or Solaris volume manager), and I like the AIX LVM better than Veritas, too. Disk management is quite different, too, but much easier to find what you need in AIX. I have known people who spent 10 years on Solaris and their biggest problem with AIX was the LVM. So learn that and as I said, the underlying parts of Unix are Unix, regardless of AIX or Solaris or HP. Though, as I said, there are differences in the internals that you should read (e.g., shared memory).
AIX is the best Unix. In my opinion, none of the others come close. Of course I have over 10 years on AIX and over 5 years on Regattas and the IBM SP2, and only 3+ years on Solaris and 5 years on BSD.
Good Luck.
The LVM (logical volume manager) is first-rate compared to Solaris DiskSuite (or Solaris volume manager), and I like the AIX LVM better than Veritas, too. Disk management is quite different, too, but much easier to find what you need in AIX. I have known people who spent 10 years on Solaris and their biggest problem with AIX was the LVM. So learn that and as I said, the underlying parts of Unix are Unix, regardless of AIX or Solaris or HP. Though, as I said, there are differences in the internals that you should read (e.g., shared memory).
AIX is the best Unix. In my opinion, none of the others come close. Of course I have over 10 years on AIX and over 5 years on Regattas and the IBM SP2, and only 3+ years on Solaris and 5 years on BSD.
Good Luck.
KenCunningham
Technical User
As kHz says, coming to AIX from 10+ years Solaris, I have struggled with the LVM concepts, but if you have a sandbox you can play in, it's worth doing so. Also, AIX seems to manage shared memory dynamically rather than setting parameters in /etc/system as with Solaris.
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![[bigsmile]](/data/assets/smilies/bigsmile.gif "[bigsmile] [bigsmile]")
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Sorry, didn't meant to start a "which is better" thread.
The reason I posted here was I thought I would get responses from Solaris guys on how difficult or easy it would be to migrate to AIX.
I myself have experience in Solaris mainly. I really don't care which is the better Unix. It's more about job opportunites.
The reason I posted here was I thought I would get responses from Solaris guys on how difficult or easy it would be to migrate to AIX.
I myself have experience in Solaris mainly. I really don't care which is the better Unix. It's more about job opportunites.
dandan123;
I have been stuck in the solaris world for 11 years and started a job a couple months ago that requires me to do OpenVMS, AIX, TRU64 etc.. I agree with the rest who have posted that the LVM topic seems to be the most difficult to get a handle on, but using it every day like anything would make things a heck of alot easier. If you have a solid Unix background things are not that hard to pick up on. AIX has some cool tools like smit and diags to make things easier to troubleshoot than does the Solaris world. The system also give error codes which can be researched easily. Your best bet is to find a system with AIX as you pointed out.
P.S. I could care less what unix is better, I just want to know them all so I can keep from being bored.
Thanks CA
I have been stuck in the solaris world for 11 years and started a job a couple months ago that requires me to do OpenVMS, AIX, TRU64 etc.. I agree with the rest who have posted that the LVM topic seems to be the most difficult to get a handle on, but using it every day like anything would make things a heck of alot easier. If you have a solid Unix background things are not that hard to pick up on. AIX has some cool tools like smit and diags to make things easier to troubleshoot than does the Solaris world. The system also give error codes which can be researched easily. Your best bet is to find a system with AIX as you pointed out.
P.S. I could care less what unix is better, I just want to know them all so I can keep from being bored.
Thanks CA
The other thing I have never run into on AIX is having to download packages. You can download software from the bull freeware site, however, I have only done that a couple of times. For Sun there is the sunfreeware site and Sun has their freeware for Solaris page; but usually installing these free packages I run into dependencies. I need to install freetype or ungif or zlib...
With AIX the packaging is much tighter and clean. Another reason why I prefer AIX.
For the number of jobs though, there are more Solaris than AIX.
With AIX the packaging is much tighter and clean. Another reason why I prefer AIX.
For the number of jobs though, there are more Solaris than AIX.
KHZ:
You can also get rpms via IBM now, but they are not supported by IBM.
"For the number of jobs though, there are more Solaris than AIX."
There are more people who do Solaris then AIX...
The cost of IBM servers are much pricer then SUN, so more companies prefer SUN over IBM.
You can also get rpms via IBM now, but they are not supported by IBM.
"For the number of jobs though, there are more Solaris than AIX."
There are more people who do Solaris then AIX...
The cost of IBM servers are much pricer then SUN, so more companies prefer SUN over IBM.
I'm an SCSA, but I've also worked a lot on HP-UX as well as AIX. AIX and HP-UX are quite similar (aside from AIX's ODM). AIX's LVM implementation is far better than HP-UX's; for instance to mirror the boot volume in AIX is just a few commands, performed, and you perform the mirroring at the volume group level. In HP-UX you perform at the logical volume level.
However both of these platforms stomp all over Solaris for ease-of-use (IMO). Solaris has DiskSuite (or rather now "Volume Manager" - a living, breathing a#£! of a means to perform both basic mirroring and more complex RAID tasks. Of course you can (and most do) invest in Veritas VM and VFS whch provides greater flexibility, but comes at the price of having to have sufficient skills in these areas. AIX LVM in the meantime is a pleasent alternative.
There are a few other things that make AIX quite attractive - the SSA mass-storage architecture is a doddle to administer (I find administering even Sun 3510's a lot less friendly in comparison). AIX NIM (Network Installation Manager) is probably most similar to HP-UX's Ignite tool, and both are embarrasingly superior to Solaris JumpStart (even with flashadm). The SMIT/smitty interface in AIX is a genuinely serious tool for syadmins to use (whilst SMC isn't). AIX's SP frame architecture is hard to beat in a campus/R&D environment, and the LPAR architecture is grindingly effective and simple to administer for mid-range environments.
However AIX does come a cropper in its support of third-party peripherals. Want to make a mksysb bootable DVD? Eh oh, you'll need an expensive DVD-RAM drive from a short list of compatible drives. Want USB 2.0 or Firewire support? Forget it. There's no equivalent of the SunPCI technology. By way of comparison, making a bootable recovery DVD image to an externally-boxed cheap DVD drive attached via a USB 2.0 PCI card is, albeit a little complex, but is possible with Sun.
And finally, IBM can be a little indecent in the haste they drop support for older versions of AIX, whilst I regularly see Solaris 2.7 & 8 environments chugging along merrily.
However both of these platforms stomp all over Solaris for ease-of-use (IMO). Solaris has DiskSuite (or rather now "Volume Manager" - a living, breathing a#£! of a means to perform both basic mirroring and more complex RAID tasks. Of course you can (and most do) invest in Veritas VM and VFS whch provides greater flexibility, but comes at the price of having to have sufficient skills in these areas. AIX LVM in the meantime is a pleasent alternative.
There are a few other things that make AIX quite attractive - the SSA mass-storage architecture is a doddle to administer (I find administering even Sun 3510's a lot less friendly in comparison). AIX NIM (Network Installation Manager) is probably most similar to HP-UX's Ignite tool, and both are embarrasingly superior to Solaris JumpStart (even with flashadm). The SMIT/smitty interface in AIX is a genuinely serious tool for syadmins to use (whilst SMC isn't). AIX's SP frame architecture is hard to beat in a campus/R&D environment, and the LPAR architecture is grindingly effective and simple to administer for mid-range environments.
However AIX does come a cropper in its support of third-party peripherals. Want to make a mksysb bootable DVD? Eh oh, you'll need an expensive DVD-RAM drive from a short list of compatible drives. Want USB 2.0 or Firewire support? Forget it. There's no equivalent of the SunPCI technology. By way of comparison, making a bootable recovery DVD image to an externally-boxed cheap DVD drive attached via a USB 2.0 PCI card is, albeit a little complex, but is possible with Sun.
And finally, IBM can be a little indecent in the haste they drop support for older versions of AIX, whilst I regularly see Solaris 2.7 & 8 environments chugging along merrily.
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