5 ms·

AIX or Linux on POWER (2010)

12 points by indigodaddy 6y ago

lukevp 6y ago
Unless your product requires AIX to function, I recommend against AIX and POWER in general. You aren’t going to be able to get cheap POWER machines for distributed computing in the future. You can’t use Rust, Go, .NET at all. You can run Kubernetes unofficially, but cross your fingers that the images you want to run have a ppc64 build. Docker doesn’t even officially support the platform. [0] There are severe limitations to AIX, and everything is just enough different to make things unpleasant. [0] https://github.com/docker-library/official-images#architectures-other-than-amd64 https://github.com/docker-library/official-images#architectu...
ch_123 6y ago
I feel like this link needs a date included in the title, since it describes POWER7 as being new (POWER7 came out in 2010)
- dang 6y ago
  Belatedly added. Thanks!
SloopJon 6y ago
This post, which talks about AIX 7.1 on POWER7, was published in August of 2010.
- dang 6y ago
  Belatedly added. Thanks!
jmclnx 6y ago
The largest problem with AIX for Linux people who have never seen it are the commands can operate differentially. But installing the GNU package gets around that. Actually in this case, I find AIX quite similar to the BSDs. One quote that was interesting/funny based upon current happenings: "All IBM need to do is create their own Linux distribution (Blue Linux perhaps?)" :)
pjmlp 6y ago
Aix naturally.
grafelic 6y ago
I had the great pleasure of adminstrating and deploying AIX for 6 years. It really is an extremely solid OS. During that time I also worked with HP-UX, which compared to AIX felt stuck in some oldschool UNIX limbo especially concerning storage handling felt extremely clunky. As mentioned in the article AIX's LVM implementation is a joy to use giving the administrator the ability to extend and SHRINK a live filesystem and LVM mirroring with AIX was rock solid. The AIX LPAR technology was very impressive and fun to work with. Perhaps the years have given my memories a rosy taint but working solely Linux now (OpenShift), I sort of miss those days with AIX.
indigodaddy 6y ago
At my dj, we still have a fairly good amount of AIX, but not enough to only have to interact with a given AIX system maybe once every few days or so, so the learning curve is slowish. The OS seems much more linuxy than Sun-ny, it would seem??

12 points by indigodaddy 6y ago

Unless your product requires AIX to function, I recommend against AIX and POWER in general. You aren’t going to be able to get cheap POWER machines for distributed computing in the future. You can’t use Rust, Go, .NET at all. You can run Kubernetes unofficially, but cross your fingers that the images you want to run have a ppc64 build. Docker doesn’t even officially support the platform. [0] There are severe limitations to AIX, and everything is just enough different to make things unpleasant. [0] https://github.com/docker-library/official-images#architectures-other-than-amd64 https://github.com/docker-library/official-images#architectu...

ch_123 6y ago

I feel like this link needs a date included in the title, since it describes POWER7 as being new (POWER7 came out in 2010)

dang 6y ago
Belatedly added. Thanks!

SloopJon 6y ago

This post, which talks about AIX 7.1 on POWER7, was published in August of 2010.

dang 6y ago
Belatedly added. Thanks!

jmclnx 6y ago

The largest problem with AIX for Linux people who have never seen it are the commands can operate differentially. But installing the GNU package gets around that. Actually in this case, I find AIX quite similar to the BSDs. One quote that was interesting/funny based upon current happenings: "All IBM need to do is create their own Linux distribution (Blue Linux perhaps?)" :)

pjmlp 6y ago

Aix naturally.

grafelic 6y ago

I had the great pleasure of adminstrating and deploying AIX for 6 years. It really is an extremely solid OS. During that time I also worked with HP-UX, which compared to AIX felt stuck in some oldschool UNIX limbo especially concerning storage handling felt extremely clunky. As mentioned in the article AIX's LVM implementation is a joy to use giving the administrator the ability to extend and SHRINK a live filesystem and LVM mirroring with AIX was rock solid. The AIX LPAR technology was very impressive and fun to work with. Perhaps the years have given my memories a rosy taint but working solely Linux now (OpenShift), I sort of miss those days with AIX.

indigodaddy 6y ago

At my dj, we still have a fairly good amount of AIX, but not enough to only have to interact with a given AIX system maybe once every few days or so, so the learning curve is slowish. The OS seems much more linuxy than Sun-ny, it would seem??