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Anthony English is an independent contractor who solves expensive problems for businesses running IBM Power Systems. He has written extensively about AIX and has been recognised for his contributions and thought leadership by being named an IBM Champion for Power Systems.
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vscsi Disks on the Loose: Map 'em or Scrap 'em!

AnthonyEnglish 270000RKFN | | Comments (5) | Visits (17894)

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SPOILT BY VIRTUALISATION We're really spoiled with virtualisation. It's so easy for us to map a LUN or a logical volume and build an LPAR, then load an operating system onto it. This makes it easy for temporary, test systems to be built and never get cleaned up. Why is that? Simple. It's because <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --> There's nothing so permanent as a temporary solution. Removing an LPAR that you no longer want to use is easy... [More]

Tags:  vio_server lspv virtual_io_server vios lslv aix lsmap vscsi

An (almost) Infallible Sign that Your OS is Going to Self-Destruct

AnthonyEnglish 270000RKFN | | Comment (1) | Visits (5988)

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Alright. I admit it. I've been studying up how to improve my blog post titles. So let me give some disclaimers: (a) your OS is probably not about to self-destruct (but would you be ready for it if it did?) (b) this is only to do with AIX (c) you probably care about your career, so you're going to read on  just in case (d) I've written blog posts and articles about this before (but I'm hoping you don't remember them). Here are four blog posts about the mksysb and how it can save your life:... [More]

Tags:  aix anthony_english disaster backup os backups system rebuild mksysb recovery restore dr

Do you suffer from VIOS phobia?

AnthonyEnglish 270000RKFN | | Comment (1) | Visits (8036)

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Most IBM Power Systems these days have a Virtual I/O Server, commonly known as the VIOS.   The VIOS facilitates the sharing of physical I/O resources. In other words, you don't need to assign an adapter for disk for each logical partition, and then another adapter for the network traffic. Instead, the VIOS owns the adapters and then you can share the resources (disk and network) by creating virtual adapters.   The benefit? This greatly reduces the amount of I/O drawers, cabling and configuration, so it makes it easy for you to... [More]

Tags:  power7 i/o vios npiv virtual_ethernet aix hmc virtual server san power8 power_systems ibm ibm_i

Don't touch that (non-existent) file!

AnthonyEnglish 270000RKFN | | Visits (7049)

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You can create a file using the AIX touch command. The touch command is used to update a file's timestamp, but if the file doesn't exist, then the touch command creates it. That's an easy way of creating a lock file - the sort of file you use to alert the world that they can't log in because some process is running - or a trigger or flag file whose existence is a signal to some script or program to begin the next process.   Trigger Happy   The problem with creating an empty lock/flag/trigger file is that no one knows where it came from. You may... [More]

Tags:  touch lock_file timestamp trigger_file flag_file

UPDATED: Grow your rootvg on the fly (from 6.1 TL 4)

AnthonyEnglish 270000RKFN | | Comments (13) | Visits (44187)

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There are lots of good reasons for having spare disk for rootvg, as I looked at in the post make way for rootvg . With virtual disks you can resize your volume group on the fly: Increase rootvg dynamically If your rootvg “disk” is actually virtual, such as a SAN LUN or a logical volume on the VIO server, then it usually can be expanded on the SAN (or using   extendlv   on the VIOS) and then recognised on the AIX LPAR using the   -g   flag of the   chvg command : chvg -g rootvg Note: this is supported for rootvg and... [More]

Tags:  disk growth chvg resize aix spare volume_group backend lun 7.1 extendlv 6.1 5.3 rootvg san

df by volume group (saving those precious fingertips)

AnthonyEnglish 270000RKFN | | Comment (1) | Visits (15021)

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As you know, you can display all the file systems using the AIX df command . But what if you want to run df just for the file systems in a single volume group? You may want to identify the culprites filling up a LUN, for example. It's surprisingly simple to do df by vg . It's a matter of combining two commands: lsvgfs and df. Command 1: lsvgfs You can use lsvgfs to list all the file systems belonging to a volume group . # lsvgfs rootvg <!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm... [More]

Tags:  aix lsvgfs volume_group df grep file_systems awk

Putting the X in AIX

AnthonyEnglish 270000RKFN | | Comments (2) | Visits (34031)

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<!-- @page { margin: 2cm } P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } A:link { so-language: zxx } --> Install X-Windows without the pane However hardline you are about the command line, there may just be a time when you need to use X-Windows. Alright, you might not actually need to, but it might just be good to know how to set it up anyway. The Windows menu utility WebSM comes in handy sometimes. I used it recently for the aixpert tool . It allowed me to have a... [More]

Tags:  aix x-windows websm x11_forwarding putty x11 wsm cde common_desktop_environmen... x-server

Top 7 Avoidable Risks of IBM Power System sites

AnthonyEnglish 270000RKFN | | Visits (4653)

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TALKING POINT FOR DECISION MAKERS. Business hates risk. Everyone does. That's why we buy insurance, or faster, better, more reliable computers. It's also why we avoid spending. It's all about risk and how we manage it. Now, if a business is running IBM Power Systems, there's a chance they've made a significant investment in getting that hardware in place. So why is it that so many businesses expose themselves to some  very basic risks ? Risks which are avoidable, and which - on the whole - don't require a huge... [More]

Tags:  aix_down_level business_risk firmware vios_upgrade dr redundancy

Do you solve expensive problems?

AnthonyEnglish 270000RKFN | | Visits (5254)

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It's a great question, isn't it? If you're a full-time employee, or maybe a long-term contractor, then you may not have to worry too much about the expenses side of things. Typically, IBM Power Systems are in larger environments for businesses that have a sense of the value of robust equipment. That means bigger teams and - more often than not - that puts you (the techie) at arms-length from the money people. But let me give you a hint: the more the people who control the purse strings value what you do, the better your job... [More]

"You need to buy a Fibre Channel adapter. No, wait!"

AnthonyEnglish 270000RKFN | | Comments (4) | Visits (7077)

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Why is it that every time I start to write a blog post, I think of a title like: "I'm such an idiot." Well, if you're going to make a claim - like the claim that I should be the original face palm statue - I need to provide some evidence. Call it social proof.   Here it comes.   I was working on a site for a client with a small Power 8 system. Two VIOS, a handful of LPARs (sorry, I meant to say VMs) and they wanted to connect a fibre channel tape drive. Redundancy wasn't a big concern for them, so I decided to... [More]

Tags:  channel virtualisation npiv vfc fibre virtual tape
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