Edit: Some links no longer work, I edited a few of them.
Originally posted July 27, 2010 on AIXchange
Wait no longer to get your hands on the latest AIX code: The AIX7 open beta is up and running.
“IBM today announced an open beta program for AIX 7, the company’s open standards-based UNIX operating system. AIX 7 builds on the capabilities of previous releases of AIX and can fully exploit the performance and energy management capabilities of the new POWER7 servers that began shipping to customers earlier this year.”AIX 7 provides full binary compatibility for programs created on earlier versions of AIX including AIX 6, AIX 5, and 32-bit programs created on even earlier versions of AIX. This means that clients can protect previous investments in Power Systems by moving existing applications up to AIX 7 without having to recompile them. Full information on AIX binary compatibility is available here.
“Many clients running prior generations of POWER hardware would like to consolidate on newer, more efficient POWER7 servers, but simply do not have the administrative resources to upgrade a large number of servers. AIX 7 introduces new technology to help simplify consolidation of these older workloads onto new systems. Clients can back up an existing AIX 5.2 environment and restore it inside of a Workload Partition on AIX 7, which can allow them to quickly take advantage of the advances in POWER technology.
“AIX 7 and Power Systems hardware provides support for very large workloads with up to 256 cores/1024 threads in a single AIX logical partition – four times greater than that of AIX 6.”
I installed the open beta when it came out, but I’ve only begun playing with the code. Rather than use physical media, I loaded it on my client LPARs with a virtual optical device. It was a straightforward download, and simple to install and get running.
The new Korn shell is one thing that caught my eye. I cannot count the number of new AIX customers who moan and groan about ksh lacking the tab completion and up arrow/down arrow access to their shell history that they enjoy on their Linux or other UNIX systems. These folks will be pleased to know that they can now access some of the same functionality as the bash shell by running /usr/bin/ksh93. The newly updated ksh93 version is also available on AIX V6.1 with the 6100-06 Technology Level.
Given my recent comments, I was also happy to see ssh running by default after the installation. We’ll see if the same is true of the actual AIX 7 release once we get the actual release media.
In addition, some new menus appear in smit. Here are a few:
* Administer VERSIONED Workload Partitions (located under Workload Partition Administration).
* Live Partition Mobility with Host Ethernet Adapter (HEA) (located under Applications on the main menu).
* AIX Runtime Expert (located under System Environments).
* Change System User Interface (located under System Environments).
* System Cryptographic Operational Mode (located under System Environments).
* Managed Editions (located on the main menu).
Finally, I saw information about using NIM in the Getting Started section. Specifically, this information provides directions on using a NIM server that’s at AIX 6.1 TL5 or higher with the AIX 7 open beta. I’ve yet to test this, but I will soon.
“A separate download is required for network install support. The NIM image is in tar format and available from the AIX Open Beta website. The image name should be similar to 710_NIM.tar.
“The tar image contains the following:
• 710_1026A_SPOT/ — This is a complete 710 spot environment and can be used for network installing the AIX 7 Open Beta mksysb.
• 710_1026A_SPOT.chrp.64.ent — 710 network boot image.
• inst.images/ — This install directory contains the bos.sysmgt package and can be used for installing the latest NIM support for AIX 7 open beta.”
These are things that immediately struck me. No doubt there’s much more to discuss — I know tons of people are talking about it on Twitter. So get in on the buzz — tell me in Comments about your favorite parts of the operating system.
For more on the open beta, check out Ken Milberg’s article in the July IBM Systems Magazine e-newsletter. Chris Gibson, Anthony English and Nigel Griffiths also offer their observations.