AIX and Linux

Edit: I still love AIX. The link to the article no longer works.

Originally posted September 14, 2010 on AIXchange

I’ve been exchanging numerous e-mails regarding this article that’s been making the rounds on Twitter. The premise? Linux is now on a par with AIX.

My response? First, note the source: CIO Weekly. Now, it’s fine that C-level executives are seeing the value of Linux. But to suggest that Linux has achieved parity with AIX? I have a hard time believing that actual AIX and Linux administrators would go that far.

The article quotes Jean Staten Healy, IBM’s director of worldwide Linux strategy.

“From Healy’s perspective, Linux is meeting the needs of many CIOs today. She noted that total cost of ownership is a focus for CIOs, but there are other pressures which Linux can help relieve. She noted that virtualization and server consolidation as well as management simplification are key CIO goals in 2010.”

And the money quote?

“‘Linux is on parity with AIX,’ Healy told InternetNews.com in response to a question about how IBM is positioning AIX against Linux. ‘Linux enables choice. I think that’s one of the basic tenants of the faith.'”

Chris Gibson wrote a great article that articulates many of the points I made in the e-mails. Among other things, Chris discusses smit, LVM, mksysb, NIM, multibos, nimadm, concurrent updates, alt_disk_install, savevg, installp, WPARs and IBM support.

To me, Linux has one huge advantage over AIX — its ease of entry. Obtaining a copy of Linux and getting up and running in a test lab is simple. About all you need is an old x86 machine or the capability to create a virtual machine to host one. Then you can play around with the systems or work or home and get comfortable.

On the other hand, if management doesn’t approve a sandbox system for the administrators to learn the ins and outs of AIX, it makes things that much more difficult. It’s great to attend classes or read IBM Redbooks, but these are no substitutes for hands-on work with an operating system and hardware.

So many, many more people have used Linux than IBM Power Systems. And that matters when a company’s UNIX team is asked which operating system they should deploy. They’re unlikely to say AIX if they’ve never previously worked with it (or even worse, if their only AIX experience came many years ago on 3.x or 4.x).

But if you’ve used AIX like I have, you can rattle off its many attributes. I like having my logical volume manager running by default. I like making changes to the system, running cfgmgr and having my new hardware and new LUNs show up automagically. I like making dynamic changes to my running system with no need for a reboot. I like that the IBM owns the hardware and the operating system, and that its support team will fix the system when I report a problem. I like having enterprise class hardware and an enterprise class operating system to run my enterprise. I even like AIX’s security through obscurity advantage. How many script kiddies are attacking my AIX machines as opposed to my Linux machines?

Maybe my problem with the article simply stems from the word choice. “Parity” is defined as “the quality or state of being equal or equivalent.” That doesn’t seem accurate to me — even if you believe Linux is as valuable as AIX, they’re very different operating systems. They aren’t the same. But I imagine the perspective does change if you look at this through the eyes of a CIO.

Ask this administrator though, and I’ll always maintain that, unless or until Linux gets the same capabilities, AIX is the superior operating system.