Edit: Still some good websites to visit.
Originally posted October 11, 2016 on AIXchange
It’s once again time to nominate IBM Champions. You can do so here.
Seeing that notice reminded me of the IBM Champions event I attended in Austin, Texas, some months back. I’d known a lot of these folks for years, but I was meeting a few of them for the first time. Balazs Babinecz was one of those people I’d never been face to face with. Like me, Balazs has a blog:
“This blog is intended for anyone who is working with AIX and encountered problems and looking for fast solutions or just want to study about AIX. This is not a usual blog, it is not updated every day. I tried to organize AIX related subjects into several topics, and when I find new info/solutions/interesting stuff I will add it to its topic. You can read here about many things of the world of AIX. (NIM, Storage, Network, VIO, PowerHA, HMC, Performance Tuning…)
The structure of each subject is very similar. First I try to give a general overview about a topic with the most important terms and definitions. This is followed by some important/useful commands, what are probably needed for everyday work. At the end, there are some common situations with solutions which could come up during the daily work of an administrator.
I tried to keep it as simple as possible, so without any further instructions you should be able to navigate through this site very easily.
All of these materials have been gathered by me through my experience, IBM Redbooks, forums and other internet sources. It means not all of them is written by me! If I find an interesting data and I think it is valuable, I publish it on this blog. (Basically this blog is my personal viewpoint about AIX related stuff, and it is not an official IBM site.) Most of the things have been tested successfully but it can occur that you encounter typos, missing steps and erroneous data (I cannot guarantee everything works perfectly), so please look and think before you act.”
It was fun getting a chance to meet Balazs, since I’ve frequented his blog over the years. It’s very well organized, with links to information about filesystems, the logical volume manager (LVM), HMC, networks, NIM, performance, storage and backup, install, PowerHA, PowerVM and more. Many of the topics include a section called “Basics,” which provide a good, quick overview of a particular topic.
I listed some other useful AIX resources here, and I should add William Favorite’s AIX QuickSheet to that list.
Balazs’s blog in particular reminds me of the advantages of a simple, easy to navigate web design, where you can start with broad topics and then drill down into specific details. It may seem like a minor thing, but it matters. Read through the comments, and you’ll see that many other admins agree.