Edit: Another good one.
Originally posted December 1, 2008 by IBM Systems Magazine
I started my IT career in 1988 as a computer operator, specializing in AS/400 servers running OS/400. It was love at first sight. The commands made sense, I learned to love WRKACTJOB and WRKJOBQ and QPRINT and QBATCH. I’d happily vary on users who’d tried to log onto their green-screen terminal too many times with the wrong password. I’d configure my alphanumeric pager to send me operator messages that were waiting for a reply. Printing reports on green bar paper and changing to different print forms became an art. You had to know where to line up the paper, and when to hit G on the console. You had to manage the backup tapes and the backup jobs. For the most part, interactive response time took care of itself, although occasionally I’d have to hold a batch job during the day if things weren’t running smoothly.
You can call it i5/OS, you can call it IBM i, you can call it whatever you want, but to me it will always be OS/400. Among many people I talk to, the feeling is the same. Name it what you want, just keep supporting and selling it, because we love it.
I worked for three different companies doing AS/400 computer operations, and the OS/400 learning curve wasn’t very steep whenever I made a change. The simplicity and the elegance of the interface was the same. The computers just worked. Sure, the machines ran different applications since the companies were in different industries. In some cases, they were in different countries. The green screens looked the same no matter where I worked. I can remember hardware issues where we would lose a 9336 disk, replace it, and the machine would keep on running. I can remember human error causing issues; however, I don’t remember the operating system locking up like others have been known to do. I can’t remember wishing I were running something else. OS/400 was and is a rock-solid platform on which to run a business.
My head was turned in 1998, and I left my first love and started my affair with AIX. I traded QSECOFR for root. There’s much to be said for AIX and open systems. I also like the way things are structured in this operating system. It can seem familiar to people with Solaris or Linux skills, although there will be new things to learn, like the Object Data Manager (ODM) and Systems Management Interface Tool (smitty). A friend likes to dismiss AIX by calling it “playing with tinker toys.” I can connect the operating system to all kinds of disk subsystems from all kinds of manufacturers. I can use third-party equipment to manage my remote terminal connections if I want to. I can run all kinds of applications from all kinds of vendors. Since it lives in the UNIX world, its heritage is considered to be more open and less proprietary, although I’m sure that open-source adherents and members of the free software foundation would argue that point.
I’ve become accustomed to things taking a certain amount of tinkering to get them to work. I know that I may have to load some drivers, or configure a file in the /etc directory to tell a program how to behave. I have to pay attention to disk consumption, file system sizes, volume groups, etc. I accept all of that as part of the whole package. Some from the IBM i world hear about this and shake their heads and wonder why anyone would put up with it.
Now that POWER servers have been consolidated and AIX and IBM i will run on the same machine, it makes sense to see what can be shared. How can we take our current AIX and IBM i environments and run them all on the same physical frame? During this exploration, I’ve been hearing a great deal of resistance from the i community. Part of this might be a natural response to any kind of change. Change can be scary and painful. However, since I’ve spent a bit of time in both the AIX and IBM i worlds, I think I can safely say it shouldn’t be scary and it definitely isn’t painful. It’s just another set of commands to learn, but once you learn them, it’s just like anything else in IT.
I’ve begun playing with IBM i again and it’s like I never left. I’ve written an article on implementing IBM i using Virtual I/O Servers (VOIS). If you’re an IBM i administrator, the idea of running IBM i as a client of VIOS might sound intimidating, it’s not. In years past, IBM i has hosted AIX and Linux partitions. Using VIOS is the exact same concept, only instead of your underlying operating system being IBM i based, it’s VIOS, which is AIX based. If you want to know why you should bother, check out “Running IBM i and AIX in the Same Physical Frame,” then let me know what you think. I still look back fondly at my first true love, and I’m glad it’s still being well positioned for the future.
If you’re an AIX administrator, offer help to IBM I administrators who might be nervous about running VIOS to connect to external disk. In some larger shops, these teams might not spend much time together, but it’s time to change that mentality.