Choosing the right operating system (OS) platform for your business is extremely important. With the Unix-based AIX OS from IBM, you can benefit from highly secure, available, and adaptable features to meet your ever-evolving business needs. If your organization is running on IBM Power Systems, an enterprise Unix platform is required, and AIX is a highly acclaimed solution.
Since AIX was first released in 1986, IBM has regularly introduced updates to the software, the most recent being the AIX 7.2 TL4. AIX has continued to remain at the core of many enterprise infrastructures, debunking the myth that AIX is “dead” due to the growing popularity of Linux. As IBM maintains its advancements and upgrades on the AIX system, its usage and popularity are certainly not diminishing. Enhancements in scale, availability, and security, in addition to rock-solid virtualization infrastructure, makes this platform a popular choice in the market. IBM Power Systems continues to maintain its longstanding reputation of being the most reliable platform in the industry, and AIX is the selected OS to add enterprise strategic value.
Why AIX?
Now that IBM AIX is available on Skytap and other cloud platforms, AIX is a competitive solution for a hybrid cloud environment. There are many compelling reasons to utilize AIX on your IBM Power Systems.
1: Reliability
IBM Power Systems AIX is well known for its incredible reliability and virtually zero downtime. It can handle the varied demands needed to run your mission-critical business applications, including modern workloads that require a high-performance stack and a highly secure infrastructure.
2: Server Consolidation
AIX will reduce the number of servers in your organization, allowing you to share multiple resources among applications and servers simultaneously. While it will likely reduce licensing and power costs, server consolidation can also free up your IT resources. You can maximize your server efficiency and performance, and increase manageability, availability, and scalability once you consolidate your existing servers on AIX. Subsequently, you will decrease your total cost of ownership in the long run. Virtualization, with regard to server consolidation, can lower maintenance costs of physical hardware and storage costs, including power and cooling, and IT staffing costs.
3: Workload Manager
A standard component included with IBM’s Power Systems AIX is the Workload Manager (WLM), which automatically manages resource allocation to processes. WLM will efficiently control the critical system components during peak times and will indicate CPU targets and limits, while also providing information on physical memory and disk I/O. With the ability to consolidate all workloads into one OS, you will have more time to manage other valuable projects in your business. Additionally, WLM allows you to classify and decide where to allocate your resources within the OS so the machine can prioritize them depending on their specific tier.
4: Cluster-Aware Capabilities
Cluster-aware capabilities are built into every AIX OS. With the ability to connect computers, servers, and other resources to function as a single unit, you benefit from a more reliable infrastructure. When one resource fails, the other machines in the cluster can compensate for the workload so you gain availability throughout your network. With cluster-aware capabilities, you also benefit from enhanced performance and scalability to grow concurrently with your business.
5: Security
AIX has had a longstanding reputation for being a highly secure OS. Features including Trusted AIX ensure that you adhere to the strict security requirements of your business. Security is a focal point of the WML system administration feature and plays a pivotal role in securing the system environment by closely monitoring daily activities within the OS.
The modern and dynamic IBM AIX OS has moved to the cloud and has provided subsequent offerings to clients, including PowerVM and the PowerVC. These specific features allow you to run newly consolidated workloads simultaneously with existing workloads in your OS environment, thereby delivering the ability to move AIX VMs between data centers and the public cloud. The increased cost efficiency complements these hybrid cloud deployments by allowing you to hand select which workloads stay on-premises versus in the cloud.
Although IBM Power Systems AIX has not made recent headlines, the AIX OS has been and will continue to be one of the most reliable, secure, and highly available operating systems. As an easy-to-use, well-founded, and dependable OS, AIX is a powerful software to manage your computer hardware. Because of its decades of experience, IBM remains at the forefront of reliable business solutions time and time again.
IBM also released the AS/400 integrated systems in 1988, and they are now referred to as IBM iSeries. IBM Power Systems AIX is designed for pSeries machines while IBM’s AS/400 is designed for iSeries machines, yet both the AIX and AS/400 run on IBM Power Systems processers. Along with AIX support, Meridian’s team of skilled engineers can expertly provide IBM iSeries support to lessen the burden on you and your IT department. Meridian can help you identify the best solutions to meet your business needs.
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