IBM Wants Linux

jsse writes "In a news conference IBM's senior vice president Steve Mills said 'the company will gladly drop its version of Unix from servers and replace it with Linux if the software matures so that it can handle the most demanding tasks.' Now the Giant, along with many other companies, jump to Linux bandwagon. The question is wether this bandwagon is capable of carrying a Giant that huge. Or the question is: can Linux beats AIX?"

Jump on the bandwagon?

[anon757]

IBM has just jumped on the bandwagon?? They've been there for a while buddy. You can already buy most of IBM's software for Linux. They've been investing in Linux like crazy for the last 2 years

Re:Jump on the bandwagon?

[einhverfr]

this is actually something I have been predicting for over a year, despite IBM's claims at the time to the contrary. There is a fundamental problem with the economics of the high-end server OS market and Linux or another open source OS could alleviate much of it.

The problem is that the largest expense of software manufacturing is paying for development (R&D). This cost has to be passed on to customers and remains fixed regardless of how many units are sold. This means that there is cost associated with each unit sold which goes down as more units are sold and up as less (Embodied R and D = total R and D / total units sold). This is what has made Microsoft successful in many areas of the market, and it is a failing point for most versions of UNIX. This means that if you buy an NT server, it has less embodied R&D than if you buy an AIX machine.

If Linux could be up to the challenge, it would diffuse the R&D costs by diffusing the R&D, thus making any company who adopted it more competitive. IBM is making the right choices here from a business perspective and (with the exception of CPRM development) becoming more of a present ally for open source.

and the answer is?

[jaxon6]

well, will those quite familiar with aix please enlighten us with what linux could be missing? it's got xfs, lvm, ppc support. and that's about the end of what i know aix and linux now share.

Re:and the answer is?

[Aapje]

They tried to write the paper, but...Word crashed.

My $.02

[why-is-it]

well, will those quite familiar with aix please enlighten us with what linux could be missing? it's got xfs, lvm, ppc support. and that's about the end of what i know aix and linux now share.

Well, as a SysAdmin who manages 50 AIX servers and 20 Solaris servers I can try to offer some info.

As has been written in a couple of posts already, AIX is designed to run on enterprise-level hardware. The bonus is that since the OS and hardware all come from IBM, there is a single point of contact for those problems. There are some really cool things that separate AIX from other UNIX's:
* Most of the critical OS functions can be controlled via the SMIT interface.
* Unlike other flavours of UNIX, AIX does not use flat files to define parameters for daemons. AIX has all the relevant information stored in an internal database (The ODM).
* AIX ships with a journaled file system and file systems can be grown on the fly.
* AIX gives way more control over disk management than other flavours of UNIX. It is easy to implement the various type sof RAID. AIX also lets you control where certain files can be physically located on your disk, and during off-peak hours the system can move files around to re-organize the disks.
* It is trivial to create a complete image of the system on a bootable tape, so disaster recovery is a snap.


There are some downsides to AIX:
* AIX takes >5 minutes to boot.
* If the ODM gets corrupted, your system can be toast.
* Sometimes it is necessary to modify the ODM directly, and this can be a bit risky (see above)
* Third-party support for AIX is sketchy. It is better to use IBM applications where possible.
* IBM hardware is more expensive than the alternatives. You pay a premium for Big Blue.

Of the downsides, the last is the most significant. Not many non-IBM vendors write applications for it, and even if they do, Solaris, and Linux get more attention.

Sorry for sounding like a commercial for IBM, but I like AIX. It does some things very well, and is quite stable. My team manages a lot of mission-critical servers and AIX is nice to work with. We have talked briefly about Linux, the perception is that Linux is not yet ready for enterprise-class workload.

Re:My $.02

[halfgoat]

I just wanted to add one thing about the AIX lvm. When he says "on thr fly" he means tht a filesystem can be grown WHILE it is still mounted. You can also do a mirror WHILE it is still mounted and being used by users. I started out on linux, and like the lvm, but there is nothing worse than realizing you need more space in a filesystem, and users are still using it. Of course this problem could be helped by better planning, but if we were all perfect, then there wouldn't be a need for too many of us.

Re:My $.02

[kevinank]

If you are doing custom device drivers then
AIX is a very nice operating system to develop
for. As a micro kernel your drivers are running
in ring 1 so it is difficult to kill ring 0.
Even with modules it is much easier for device drivers in Linux to panic the kernel, and in Linux you don't get a core dump of the panic'd kernel to debug.

Also for those who aren't familiar with AIX, 'smit' is the system administration tool developed for AIX by IBM. There are about a thousand little commands to modify individual configuration files in AIX, that are nearly impossible to remember. Personally I prefer 'vi' and text based configuration. On the other hand AIX commands are scriptable (I suppose text files can be as well
with a bit of Perl, but text is easier to get
AFU'd), and smit provides a nice GUI interface for checking parameter completeness.

$0.01 more...

[Sharkeys-Day]

I agree with most of your comments. SMIT is way cool. IBM should open source the SMIT framework, and let linux hackers fill in the proper commands for Linux.

The ODM is real drag though. It make AIX administration so different from every other Unix, that only the extreme usefulness of SMIT makes administering the system tolerable.

IBM's jfs/lvm are great too.

But you forgot one really great thing about about AIX. You never need to rebuild the kernel! (well, hardly ever. The authors of the O'Reilly Unix admin book mention one case.) Kernel parameters are self-adjusting for the most part.

Linux doesn't have the kernel parameter hell of System V (driver hell instead), but it does have kernel parameters, and if you are working at the high end, you _will_ need to tune them. And what's worst is that there is no one central place to find them all. Some are in /proc, some in one .h file, some in another .h file, and *NONE* in the normal kernel configuration method.

Re:My $.02

[duffbeer703]

Haha. You funny.

LVM = linux's is shitty, and has a habit of toasting disks

HA = linux equivants are a joke. Ever work with an SP cluster?

SMIT = linuxconf is a toy, and a bad one at that

ODM = can be argued both ways

AFS = OpenAFS is not ready for primetime

NFS = remember not to try using version 3!

I suggest trying OS's that you bash.

Literacy

[G-funk]

Now the Giant, along with many other companies, jump to Linux bandwagon. The question is wether this bandwagon is capable of carrying a Giant that huge. Or the question is: can Linux beats AIX?"

Um... All your base?

Easy

[blang]

Of all the unixen I have played with AIX is one of the worst. Only Conrol data's unix and NCR was worse. Their smit admin tool is pretty cool, but everything else looks like nothing else, and porting stuff to AIX is no fun.