Which Linux is best for me

As businesses look to free themselves from expensive support agreements and vendor lock-in they enevitibly look toward Linux. Here is an excellent article comparing the major versions:

http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/feature/Compare-popular-Linux-distributions-for-servers

IBM Faces a rocky time (Latest press release)

Maybe it is just me but I read this article (http://www.zdnet.com/ibm-faces-rocky-time-but-transformation-holds-the-key-ceo-7000029321) and could not help thinking that this is probably the biggest missed opportunity of the century?

If you ask any IT Manager what they are doing they will doubtless tell you that "they are moving to the cloud" or "going opensource", however the reality is always something different. It is a bit like asking somebody "how often they have sex". They will almost never give you an honest answer, but more likely one that sounds "normal" or makes them sound good etc.

There will always be a gap between our desires and aspirations, and the harsh reality of day to day life, and IT is no different. Even if you wish to get rid of every piece of IBM equipment, or trace of AIX or i5OS, the reality is that this can take a huge amount of planning, and years of effort to achieve. It is because of this that I think IBM really screwed-up by effectively abandoning their OS users.

If I were in charge of AIX/i5 development I would be looking for as many ways as possible to build-in tools and utilities that made migration easier whilst providing more compatibility and lower licencing costs. This would mean that users were more likely to stick with their Power hardware whilst running parallel Linux and AIX/i5 workloads.

OpenStack

IBM is moving ever closer to a Linux/Open-source future, and with that in mind I found this really useful source of OpenStack tutorials:

http://opensource.com/business/14/5/new-openstack-tutorials?sc_cid=70160000000dF0mAAE&elq=4e804775974e4c989362db76275d4960&elqCampaignId=19892

Viewing the contents of a disk without varying on the VG

It can be very dangerous to attempt to import or varyon a disk that has been used as a boot disk because if it has the same logical volume names as those in your rootvg, it will render the system unbootable.

To view a disk without varying it on:

# lqueryvg -p hdisk0 -L
00c9b8fb00004c000000013a8c97f698.1   backup_lv 1
00c9b8fb00004c000000013a8c97f698.2   loglv01 1
00c9b8fb00004c000000013a8c97f698.3   fslv19 1
00c9b8fb00004c000000013a8c97f698.4   was70bkp 1
00c9b8fb00004c000000013a8c97f698.5   paging00 1
00c9b8fb00004c000000013a8c97f698.6   fixes_lv 1

The above disk would not be a problem, however if it contained a rootvg you should not vary it on:

# lqueryvg -p hdisk2 -L
00c9b8fb00004c0000000132da76b3ae.1   hd5 1
00c9b8fb00004c0000000132da76b3ae.2   hd6 1
00c9b8fb00004c0000000132da76b3ae.3   hd8 1
00c9b8fb00004c0000000132da76b3ae.4   hd4 1
00c9b8fb00004c0000000132da76b3ae.5   hd2 1
00c9b8fb00004c0000000132da76b3ae.6   hd9v

Installing Apache, MySQL, and PHP on AIX

This is useful if you are looking to use your AIX webserver with PHP scripts:

http://www.scheerer.co.uk/2013/05/installing-apache-php-and-mysql-on-ibm-aix-7-1/

Cross-Platform Managed File Transfer solution

Are you struggling to control and maintain all your current file transfers and data connections? If so check-out: GoAnyWhere MFT from Linoma Software. The software is written in java and runs on Windows, Linux, and Power (AIX and i5OS), so ideal if you have a mixed estate or are looking to migrate to Linux.

A menu driven interface for the HMC

If you are struggling to remember the syntax of your HMC shell commands, this opensource project is for you: http://ezh.sourceforge.net/

It not only provides a menu script, but also contains a list of most of the useful commands along with examples.