Edit: Some links no longer work.
Originally posted October 5, 2015 on AIXchange
What version of AIX are you running? At conferences and events where presenters ask for attendees to put up their hands I am seeing fewer and fewer shops running AIX 5.3, AIX 5.2 or older versions of AIX. They are migrating to newer hardware and newer versions of PowerVM and the AIX operating system.
I have been to some training lately that reiterated a good point, when you run AIX on IBM Power servers, you get your products and support from one vendor. Instead of worrying about compatibility among your server and your hypervisor and your operating system, or issues where overhead from your hypervisor can introduce performance penalties, you run an integrated stack from the hardware through the firmware into the operating system. You take advantage of IBM’s mainframe heritage and virtualization options that are designed into the hardware instead of bolted on in software. The massive memory bandwidth and threads per core that are available with POWER8 and the latest operating system versions that exploit the hardware are unmatched by the competition. In my training I heard some differentiators for AIX and Power compared to other operating systems and environments. AIX usually runs key workloads, while other operating systems are used for less-critical applications. AIX and POWER8 offer better performance and better scaling than other platforms. With PowerVM, organizations have many opportunities for server and workload consolidation with the ability to tightly “pack” these servers and run at high average utilizations.
Until now, our options for running AIX on POWER8 were AIX 5.2 and AIX 5.3 in versioned WPARs, AIX 6.1 and AIX 7.1.
IBM’s latest announcement brings us to AIX version 7.2, which will provide for Live Update for Interim Fixes, Server Based Flash Caching, 40G RoCE for Oracle RAC performance and vNIC adapters we can use with SRIOV adapters that will provide for quality of service (QOS) settings. The vNIC will also help us use SRIOV adapters with Live Partition Mobility, which was one of the drawbacks of SRIOV before. vNIC will be more efficient than using shared Ethernet adapters (SEA) in our VIO servers. vNIC will also work with AIX 7.1 TL4, so you do not necessarily need to upgrade to AIX 7.2 to take advantage of it.
AIX 7.2 still comes in two varieties: AIX Standard Edition (which includes Dynamic System Optimizer) and AIX Enterprise Edition. Dynamic System Optimizer will be included in the base OS to help us with system tuning, especially on the larger multi-CEC systems. AIX Enterprise edition consists of everything that you find in AIX Standard Edition, but it also includes other IBM software you can use to manage your environment including:
- PowerVC
- PowerSC Standard Edition
- AIX Dynamic System Optimizer
- Cloud Manager with OpenStack for Power V4.3
- IBM Tivoli Monitoring V8.1
- IBM BigFix Lifecycle V9.2
One interesting feature that is coming along is the ability to live update service packs and technology levels. The current AIX hotpatch technology (available since AIX 6.1) is great for certain isolated ifixes, but is not extensible to service packs or technology levels. AIX 7.2 Live Update is a new approach that initially supports only ifixes, but is designed to be extensible to service packs and technology levels in the future.
We will be able to use Coherent Accelerator Processor Interfaces (CAPI) with AIX 7.2, which up to now it has been Linux only. I expect to see more hardware taking advantage of CAPI in the future. By using CAPI, we can reduce the number of instructions that we need to do I/O, instead of talking to an interface and using those drivers, we are going directly from the CPU to a flash storage array, for example.
There will be two different features related to SSDs: LVM Mirroring to Flash and Server Based Flash Caching. These are the key distinctions:
LVM Mirroring to flash uses existing LVM mirroring capability to mirror slower spinning storage to high-speed SSD storage, and then we can specify that the SSD is the preferred mirror for reads. This implies that the SSD must have the same capacity as the spinning storage. This is implemented on both 7.1 (already available in TL3 SP4), and 7.2
Server Based Flash Caching is the ability to use a smaller SSD as a cache for larger and slower spinning storage. This does not rely on LVM mirroring (the storage does not have to be mirrored). Unless you need a full mirror, this would be a more cost-effective solution than mirroring since it does not require as much SSD capacity, but it will provide a similar performance benefit. This is an AIX 7.2-only feature (at least for now).
Other Announcements
Also in these announcements, we find that the newest release of PowerKVM, v3.1, will run in little endian mode. There will be vCPU and memory hot plug support, dynamic micro threading, and SRIOV support.
On the hardware side new Linux only machines were announced:
- S822LC for High Performance Computing is a 2-socket 2U system with two NVIDIA GPUs.
- S822LC for Commercial Computing is a 2-socket 2U system with no GPU. It will have up to 20 cores and 1 TB memory with five PCIe slots, four of which are CAPI enabled.
- S812LC is a 1-socket 2U system with up to 14 large form factor disk drives, which provides for 84 TB of on-board storage. This machine supports up to 10 cores and 1 TB memory with four PCIe slots, two of which are CAPI enabled.
The LC system portfolio will be different from other scale-out servers. Customers will have access to pricing and configurations and will purchase directly from the Web, although they are still welcome to engage with a business partner to help them with their machines. IBM states that it is simple to order these systems. They come with a three-year 8×5 warranty with 100 percent client replaceable parts. Six configurations are available. These systems should be available Oct. 30.
As always, IBM is committed to bringing new hardware and operating system features to its customers, and this announcement is no exception.
For more on these announcements, check out:
Jay Kruemcke’s blog “AIX 7.2 and October Power software announcements”
Recently updated IBM AIX – From Strength to Strength document
Announcement letter: IBM AIX 7.2 delivers the reliability, availability, performance, and security needed to be successful in the new global economy
A list of all of today’s announcements