More From the Grab Bag

Every now and again I like to present a grab bag of links that I find to be interesting, even if they don't warrant their own post.

For instance, some weeks back I wrote that more people are talking about AIX on Power and its industry-best downtime numbers.

Here's more on that topic.

"Among the customers surveyed by ITIC, IBM's Power Systems running AIX experienced (this includes older System p and pSeries iron) the least amount of downtime per year, when averaged across all customers using these platforms. AIX shops reported an average of 0.42 Tier 1 incidents per year and 0.34 Tier 2 incidents, and not one customer reported a Tier 3 outage on their AIX boxes. The Power Systems machines (and this includes older System i and iSeries iron) had an average of 0.56 Tier 1 outages per year, 0.44 Tier 2 outages per year, and 0.12 Tier 3 outages. So in 2009 at least, the i platform fared a little worse than the AIX platform running on Power iron."

I also liked these recent articles:

* From ComputerWorld:

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) system, which went online in August, is compromised of 'Stratus' and its backup, 'Cirrus,' two separate supercomputers with about 5,000 IBM POWER6 chips running AIX operating systems."

* IBM developerWorks has this piece on a script that can gather information about your systems. Then you run the diff command to find the differences between them.


* Here, the reuse of SAN disks is examined:

"The support of these scenarios in which remapping, copying, and reuse of SAN disks is allowed and supported has never been officially documented. There have been some documents and IBM Redbooks that have claimed support for specific scenarios, but they do not list the specific steps or restrictions. The scenarios detailed here guide systems administrators through the steps taken to achieve the specific environment desired. They also attempt to explain why the setup must be followed to achieve the desired results. If the steps are not followed, in some cases the system may not boot."

* Here's an IBM Systems Magazine Web Exclusive on using the mkramdsk command:

"One of the most common concerns for system administrators is maximizing disk performance. The AIX command mkramdisk is ideal for producing very high speed I/O by letting the memory do all the work. Database administrators are well aware of the benefits of keeping frequently accessed data in memory in order to reduce the need to retrieve that data from disk. The AIX mkramdisk command allows system administrators to create memory-resident file systems. The performance benefits of using RAM disk can be astonishing. The unload of a large TSM database was reduced from 40 hours on SAN disks down to 10 minutes using RAM disk."

* Finally, here's something to look forward to with the POWER7 processors:

"IBM's Hot Chips presentation on its forthcoming 45nm POWER7 server processor had a wealth of information on the chip… POWER7 will come in 4-, 6-, and 8-core varieties, with the default presumably being the 8-core and the lower-core variants being offered to improve yields."

If you've found interesting articles online, please share your links in Comments.

Migrate When the Time is Right

I know that many of you have been upgrading from older technology to POWER6 servers. As one customer recently told me, "The machine is working great. Performance is better than I expected." That seems to be a constant theme: people are happy with the newer hardware when they get it deployed.

Still, I'm sure that many others have been delaying their upgrades. They figure that POWER7 will be here soon enough, so why not just put that upgrade on hold for a while?

As I noted, IBM recently issued a statement of direction that I consider to be good news for these customers. If you've been debating whether to order a POWER6 server now or wait until POWER7 comes out, you can have the best of both: POWER6 performance now, and POWER7 when it ships.

From IBM:

"IBM plans to provide an upgrade path from the current IBM Power 595 server with 12X I/O to IBM's next-generation POWER7 processor-based high-end server. The upgrade is planned as a simple replacement of the processor books and two system controllers with new POWER7 components, within the existing system frame. IBM also plans to provide an upgrade path from the current IBM Power 570 server with 12X I/O to IBM's next generation POWER7 processor-based modular enterprise server."

More details are emerging about POWER7 processors.

"'POWER7 is an 8-core, high performance server chip. A solid chip is a good start. But to win the race, you need a balanced system. POWER7 enables that balance...' Starke noted that the POWER7 offered 'multiple optimization points,' such as improved energy efficiency, upgraded thread performance, dynamic allocation of resources and an 'extreme' increase in socket throughput. In addition, the POWER7 provides scalability up to 32 sockets, 32MB on chip eDRAM shared L3, dual DDR3 memory controllers, 100GB/s memory bandwidth per chip (sustained), 360GB/s SMP bandwidth/chip and 256KB L2 per core.

Also:

"Basically, the POWER7 is an 8-, 6, and 4-core chip with 1.2 billion transistors, running at an undisclosed clock speed. A shared L3 cache of up to 32 Mbytes in size will use eDRAM. The POWER7 will scale up to 32 sockets and 1,024 threads. Not surprisingly, it will be backward-compatible with the POWER6.

"Not surprisingly, the performance of the POWER7 exceeds the POWER6 by a significant amount, although IBM has left off actual numerical comparisons. Application comparisons such as integer workloads seem to indicate an improvement of about 20 percent across the board on a per-core basis, and a 4X to 5X performance when compared chip to chip."

Hardware constantly evolves, and every organization needs to evaluate the tradeoffs when comparing performance to the costs of acquisition and running new machines. Keeping up on all of the benefits of POWER6 and POWER7 compared to older technology that you might be running today can be a challenge. However, by creating an upgrade path that allows your organization to migrate when the time is right, IBM has made it easier to protect your investment.

Revisiting IBM Systems Director

As complexity increases, we find that we need better tools to manage our machines. If we're only responsible for one or two machines, then logging in and leaving topas or vmstat running in a few xterm windows might make sense. Managing these smaller environments probably isn't very challenging. However, if you're dealing with many different physical and virtual machines, logical partitions, the HMC, VIO servers, etc., management and administration can become much more complex and cumbersome. Then add to the puzzle the physical x86 servers running VMware and providing the opportunities to run vmotion or live partition mobility. Now you need to track where LPARs are physically running.

IBM's solution for dealing with these challenges is IBM Systems Director.

I recently attended an IBM Systems Director workshop where I listened to lectures and participated in hands-on lab exercises with Director 6.1. I had seen 6.1 before, and I've read announcements and articles about it, but I hadn't spent much time working in depth with it. If your only exposure to Systems Director is the 5.2 version, check into this workshop. It can help you see the benefits of using IBM Systems Director 6.1 to manage your computing environment. As IBM says, this is a workshop, not a class.

This is from the Web site:

"IBM is presenting these workshops to give participants the information needed to be successful in the implementation, use and maintenance of an IBM Systems Director management environment. This includes the use of IBM systems management tools and utilities including IBM Systems Director."

Go view the schedule and see if a workshop is headed to your area. It's well worth a moment of your time.

More from IBM:

"The workshop will include discussions, presentations, videos, demonstrations and hands-on activities. Topics will vary based on time considerations and attendee interest. There is no cost for participation in the workshop."

In my workshop we had access to a laptop loaded with VMware. It had a total of three virtual machines preinstalled: one ran Systems Director, another a Windows operating system with a Systems Director agent running on it, and the third ran agentless. Among other tasks, we were able to log-on and run discovery to find devices, request access to machines so that Systems Director could log in, run inventory on the systems to get more information about them, set up alerts based on criteria that we are interested in, manage updates for the different systems, remotely install System Director agents on systems we wanted to manage, set up Systems Director user access, etc.

If you can't get to a workshop yourself, you can still browse various resources devoted to System Director, including frequently asked questions and links to videos and the CD that are handed out during the workshops.

Go here and here to download and install the actual IBM Systems Director product.

Here's IBMer Greg Hintermeister describing the installation process in an article he wrote earlier this year:

"IBM Systems Director integrates the embedded AIX console tasks for extending AIX operating system management. From the Power Systems Management summary page, select 'AIX systems' under the operating systems category. From here, right-click an operating system to select the AIX web console to launch. One new task in the AIX console is the health task, which shows system configuration values and graphs of key performance metrics, as well as the top processes and file systems in use."

I'd heard for some time that IBM Systems Director 6.1 is new and improved compared to the 5.2 version. Now I know, thanks to the workshop. I encourage you to look more closely at the product--download it, install it, use it. Then post your own thoughts in Comments.

Twitter: A Toy and a Tool

You may not be able to say much in only 140 characters, but you can still do plenty via Twitter.

I'm a late adopter when it comes to social networking. I dabble with LinkedIn but continue to resist MySpace and Facebook. When Twitter first launched, I went to the Web site and wondered, "What am I going to do with this?" But since I started "tweeting" and, specifically, running TweetDeck, I've found ways to make Twitter useful for me.

For those similarly wary of social networking, here's the rundown on Twitter, courtesy of Wikipedia:

"Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users -- known as followers -- who have subscribed to them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter Web site, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications."

Through Twitter, I've watched people from all walks of life as they broadcast their thoughts and ideas. Many link to stories they find on Slashdot or Digg, though I don't follow these folks for long, as they aren't providing anything new or valuable to me.

I've followed companies. At least some of them seem to recognize Twitter's potential as a customer service tool. I watched employees from an airline help stranded travelers and inform customers about new cities or services that they're adding. I also watched Tony Hawk hide skateboards and tell people where to find them. And of course, in the aftermath of the recent Iran elections, Twitter became the primary means for Iranians to tell the world about the protests and violence.

I agree with those who say there are more followers than tweeters. In my case, I don't spend much time tweeting. I figure people don't care about what I'm eating or that I'm stuck in traffic. What I find powerful about Twitter is the ability to search.

Numerous Twitter-related clients are available for the PC or your smartphone. With TweetDeck, I can continuously run searches for things that interest me (AIX, POWER6, IBM, etc.). Whenever a tweeter comments on these topics, I'll see it. Often I'll check the person’s profile and recent tweets. If they interest me, I'll follow the tweeter. Over time you'll find information that you might not have otherwise uncovered.

Google helped me find ways to automate sending Twitter posts from the command line using "curl" and "split" on a Linux machine. To test the functionality, I downloaded information from different Web sites and used the split command to divide these into several files. Then I published them on Twitter. I was doing things like downloading weather forecasts or RSS feeds, splitting them into 140 character chunks, and tweeting them. People more creative than I am could find other uses for splitting data using cron and simple text parsing.

I'd read that someone posted the text to "Moby Dick" onto Twitter. I wanted to do something similar, but  on a much smaller scale, so I found the text from the Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat" and tweeted that file.

First I split it into 140-character chunks:

split –b 140 catinhat.txt cathat

This created files in my directory with names like cathataa, cathatab, cathatac, etc. To send them out via Twitter, I just ran:

for i in a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y; do curl -u
username:password -d "status=`cat cathata$i`"
http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml; done

Where the username and password were obviously real ones.

While for me this was simply an exercise in automatically splitting and posting large files, were anyone following me on Twitter, they would have be notified of my action. And anyone searching for the text of "The Cat in the Hat" would have been directed to my Twitter page. Granted, using this service to tweet "Moby Dick" and "The Cat in the Hat" is silly, but as I said, more and more people will find interesting things to do with Twitter.

Some argue that Twitter is a fad, and that it will soon be replaced by something else. That may be true. Nothing lasts forever. For now I'll use it until the next big thing comes along. Then I'll migrate to that next big thing--in due time, of course. I am a late adopter, after all.

Learn by Studying, Then by Doing

As I noted in last week's AIXchange blog entry, Ken Milberg has a soon-to-be-released book on understanding AIX performance. Blogging about Ken's book got me thinking about performance, and how challenging it is for AIX administrators to become well-versed in this area.

In 2003 I worked for IBM in Boulder, Colo. We were invited to attend an onsite class taught by Tom Farwell. These AIX performance classes were going to be held twice a week over five weeks, 10 classes in total. Intrigued by the subject matter, I attended the first class. It felt like there were a hundred people in that conference room. But by the end of the course, only a handful of administrators remained. I often wonder about that. AIX performance is critical for an administrator to understand, yet it can be a challenging topic to master. Some, I imagine, dropped out due to a heavy workload or commitments outside of work. Others didn't want to put forth the effort necessary to understand the concepts, or felt there was too much detail that they didn't need to understand.

Later that year at IBM Technical University in Miami, Tom was a presenter at some of the sessions. I remember sitting in the crowd and being struck by the huge amount of interest from the attendees. During breaks people would bring their laptops to the front and ask Tom to take a look (by virtue of their wireless connections) at their production systems that were having issues. Simply by having the admins run a few commands, Tom quickly deduced what was wrong in many cases.

He was the first person that I heard apply queueing theory principles to AIX performance, and Tom's authored several articles in IBM Systems Magazine that are worth reading. Some samples are "Examining vmstat" and "It's All in the Networking." A Google search should yield several others.

In addition to Tom's writing, the "AIX 5L Practical Performance Tools and Tuning Guide" Redbooks publication and other performance-themed IBM Redbooks publications can help you gain knowledge on this topic.

Once you've done your reading and studying, get a test machine to practice on. Start by running commands from nstress as explained on IBM developerWorks, including ncpu, ndisk, nfile and nmem to simulate different types of workloads on your machine.

Spend the time with the AIX tools and commands that can help you pinpoint the causes of system problems and show you how the output appears when the machine is under load.

Better still, get your actual application running and find ways to break your test box. Troubleshooting a live, misbehaving machine is the best way I know to prove you really understand how to diagnose and fix problems.

Get the knowledge from the books, and then get the hands-on experience from the machines. Both acts will help you understand AIX performance--and, accordingly, allow you to become better at your job.

IBM Hardware Fits in the Big Picture

I've worked for numerous companies that were IBM customers. For several years I worked for IBM in Boulder, Colo. I currently work for an IBM business partner. Through all this time, I've been happily using IBM racks with IBM servers. Sure, there were other servers running other operating systems that used different racks in the various computer rooms, but the IBM servers all lived in IBM racks.

I was recently on a raised floor at a server co-location company and watched IBM customer engineers move a POWER5 Model 570 from an IBM rack to a non-IBM rack. To install the server, they had to carefully measure its required depth. To make the flex cable on the front of the machine fit into the rack, they had to modify the side of the rack due to some protruding metal on the side doors that was interfering with the flex cable. Obviously, the whole operation took longer than a regular rack install into a standard IBM rack would have taken.

While they got the server to work in the non-IBM rack, it wasn't an ideal situation. The power distribution units in the back of the rack were rotated compared to the IBM rack, and the plugs were oriented so that when the servers were plugged in, power supplies and PCI cards couldn't be swapped without removing the entire PDU first.

So why go to this trouble? These non-IBM racks are taller and have a smaller footprint than the previously used IBM racks. When you're paying by the square foot, you want to squeeze in as much equipment as you can. By using extra space at the top of the rack, the co-locator could fit more equipment into its floor space. I can certainly understand that with several taller, narrower racks, you can wedge more racks into a row of hardware, and that can translate into more revenue for the operators of the shared environment. (This might not matter so much in a customer-owned data center, but in this shared environment, it's critical.)

One of the facility managers said that IBM just doesn't get co-location. He argues that every other vendor can make its equipment fit into these racks, why can't IBM?

My take is that IBM engineering designs IBM racks with IBM hardware in mind. They're rugged. They're built to fit without modification, and they're built so that parts can be easily hot-swapped in and out of the machines. If IBM racks don't fit nicely into your cookie cutter server room that was designed with non-IBM servers and racks in mind, if they're wider than other enclosures, then maybe it's time to rethink the design of the room. The problem as I see it is that many customers think that everything is the size of an x86 machine. However, they should plan for equipment of other sizes. It's not necessary to redesign the computer room--but maybe designating an aisle for nonstardard-sized racks would give them some flexibility.

The thing is, the greater serviceability of IBM solutions is well worth the sacrifice of some floor space. IBM engineering designed and built its racks with IBM servers in mind. Using PowerVM and IBM Power Systems servers, you can consolidate multiple large workloads onto a much smaller footprint. And isn't creating the smallest footprint the goal here? Yes, IBM racks might take up an extra square foot or two compared to non-IBM racks, but this should be easily offset by an overall reduction in server hardware.

I believe IBM keenly understands co-location. They've given me hardware that I can easily carve into
multiple LPARs per physical frame, which allows me to consolidate workloads. The technology is very forgiving and flexible--as workloads grow and change, it's very easy to use a dynamic LPAR operation and make the adjustment.

Ultimately of course, the customer is always right. So if you need to make your server fit into a smaller footprint on your raised floor, you can and should do so. But first, reconsider what you're giving up by making this change. Saving physical space doesn't always equate to saving money.

Clock Synching is Worth Your Time

How many physical machines or virtual partitions do you have in your environment? One? Ten? Hundreds? How often do you verify that the time is set correctly on each of your servers? I've seen  customers set the time on a machine using the date command, and then forget about it.

Why should you care whether your machines keep accurate time? In many environments, one server hosts a database while another hosts the application. If either doesn't maintain accurate time, problems can result. For instance, the database might think it's getting requests from the future, or from the past. Have you ever tried to troubleshoot two machines whose timestamps aren't in sync? Good luck trying to figure out what happened at a given point in time. Maybe you've tried running an HACMP failover on machines with clocks that are off, or maybe you've tried live application mobility on machines keeping different times. Each of these scenarios can introduce problems into your environment due to timing issues, and in same cases will refuse to work at all. Therefore, setting up network time protocol (NTP) is something we must do to keep our clocks in sync.

From Wikipedia: "Clock synchronization is a problem from computer science and engineering which deals with the idea that internal clocks of several computers may differ. Even when initially set accurately, real clocks will differ after some amount of time due to clock drift. Clock drift refers to several related phenomena where a clock does not run at the exact right speed compared to another clock."

Some people will run the "ntpdate –u <timeserver>" command from cron at some interval to keep clocks in sync. However, I would argue that we should set up the xntpd daemon instead. If you're unsure how to do this, keep reading.

First, determine which time server you will use. Many times a time server is already set up in your environment, so you can use that one. You'll need to edit the /etc/ntp.conf file and make changes. On a default AIX machine, at the end of the file you should find:

#   Broadcast client, no authentication.
#
broadcastclient
driftfile /etc/ntp.drift
tracefile /etc/ntp.trace

Comment out the broadcastclient stanza, and replace it with:

server <ntpserver>
where <ntpserver> is the name of the server you plan to use.

The NTP Web site, ntp.org, offers this as a starting point:

server 0.pool.ntp.org
server 1.pool.ntp.org
server 2.pool.ntp.org

However, if you look at that Web site, you'll also find that you could use a sub-zone of pools based on continent or country.

According to ntp.org: "As pool.ntp.org will assign you timeservers from all over the world, time quality will not be ideal. You get a bit better result if you use the continental zones (For example europe, north-america, oceania or asia.pool.ntp.org), and even better time if you use the country zone (like ch.pool.ntp.org in Switzerland) - for all these zones, you can again use the 0, 1 or 2 prefixes, like 0.ch.pool.ntp.org. Note, however, that the country zone might not exist for your country, or might contain only one or two timeservers. If you know timeservers that are really close to you (measured by network distance, with traceroute or ping), time probably will be even better."

After set up your /etc/ntp.conf file the way you want it, save it and run startsrc –s xntpd.

Once your daemon is running, check your output with ntpq –p.

After some period of time (ntp.org says it could take up to 30 minutes), you should see:

ntpq -p
     remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset    disp
==============================================================================
+ip-72-167-54-20 193.5.216.14     2 u   41   64  377    63.26   -9.092    5.14
*rrcs-64-183-55- 130.149.17.8     1 u   41   64  377    84.99   -1.517    7.90
mirror          131.188.3.222    3 u   41   64  377     8.44   -9.533    5.33

Again from ntp.org: "The IP addresses will be different, because you've been assigned random timeservers. The essential thing is that one of the lines starts with an asterisk (*), this means your computer gets the time from the Internet."

Once you set up everything, be sure to go into /etc/rc.tcpip and uncomment the line:

start /usr/sbin/xntpd "$src_running"

This enables xntpd to restart after you reboot your machine.

Keeping all of your clocks accurate and in sync is a best practice. It should be one more step on your new server build checklists, if it isn't already.

Remember the Alternatives to GUI

Most readers of this blog are command line-savvy. Had we wanted to use a GUI on our servers, we would have become Windows administrators. Why gain console access using a browser to login to the Hardware Management Console (HMC) or the Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM) GUI when you can just as easily ssh directly to your IVM server (using the padmin userid) or HMC (as hscroot)?

In the recent AIXchange post about live partition mobility, I was on a blade, so I was able to run the mkvt command to open a console window. If you're unsure about your partition names and numbers, then run the lssyscfg command (I use the –F flag to give me the name and lpar_id fields; you can choose other fields that might interest you as well):

# lssyscfg -r lpar -F name,lpar_id
aix6san1,6

#mkvt –id 6

If someone left the console running elsewhere and the console is already in use, then use:

#rmvt –id 6

Next, run your mkvt command on the command line. From your HMC, you can ssh in as hscroot and use the vtmenu command. From publib:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/scope/hw/index.jsp?topic=/iphcx/vtmenu.htm

"vtmenu is a Perl script which displays a list of partitions, opening a virtual terminal on the one selected. If more than one managed systems exists, a list of them is displayed first. After a managed system is selected, a list of all logical partitions on that managed system is displayed. The vtmenu command does not accept any flags or parameters and ignores all that are specified."

vtmenu displays the managed systems connected to your HMC, and it prompts you to choose which managed system to connect to. Once you connect, it displays a list of the LPARs from which you can select.

Partitions On Managed System:

Enter Number of Running Partition (q to quit):
Enter Number of Running Partition (q to quit): 1
Opening Virtual Terminal On Partition lpar1 . . .
Open in progress
Open Completed.

Once you select the session you want to connect to, it should behave exactly as any other console window to which you're accustomed. 

You can also use the mkvterm –m <machine> -p <partition> command if you know the machine name and the LPAR name. I find vtmenu to be useful if you do not know that information off the top of your head.  If you need to get the machine name, try lssyscfg –r sys, then use lssyscfg -r lpar -m <machine name> –F to get a list of LPAR names.  If someone else is using a console, or you left a console running somewhere else, you can use the rmvterm –m <machine> -p <partition> command. 

In any event, when you are done using a console, you can type ~~. in order to cleanly exit, and you will get a message that says Terminate session? [y/n]. Answer with y and you will go back to the vtmenu screen or to the command line, depending on what method you used to create the console.

Of course, the GUI is always an option, but don't forget that you can also get console sessions using ssh with your HMC or IVM.

Keep it Simple? If Only

In a recent e-mail exchange, a friend and I were debating which was a better characteristic of a computer system, the capability to scale up or scale out? Would you rather have one machine that you can grow and virtualize, or a room full of many small machines? Which solution costs less and which is easier to administer? Is a cluster better than a beefy, powerful machine? Which philosophy is best for customers? The two of us hold different perspectives on these matters.

Somewhere during our discussion, he sent me a link to this article from The Register. I enjoyed reading it, and I'll be on the lookout for someone to implement the ideas it raises. In particular, this paragraph got me thinking:

"The other lesson to learn from the venerable AS/400--one that DEC and HP managers didn't get about their own minis and a lesson that Big Blue, to its chagrin, eventually forgot--is that an integrated system is not about itself. It's about the applications that run atop it. You make the system invisible, easy, beloved, reliable, and you get as many real-world, enterprise-class applications as possible on the machine and you help software houses make money by helping them push complete, turnkey systems to customers who are sick of thinking about computers."

The idea of a turnkey system for customers that don't want to think about a computer is exactly right. We're surrounded by technology, but we don't necessarily need to know how it works under the covers. How many of us have a DVR that runs Linux as the operating system? Do we care that Linux is running under the covers? We just want to record our favorite shows so we can watch them at our convenience. It's not like we want or need root access to our DVRs. (Of course, if you really want that, it's out there.)

What about smart phones, video game consoles, computer electronics in our cars, etc.? Sure, some folks want to hack their own hardware, but most of us just want the technology to work. My point is, you shouldn't have to know how to administer and secure your hardware. It should be secure and work out of the box.

I think people are drawn to simple products that simply work. You plug them in and there's no learning curve. You don't need to know that the operating system is running-- it just does what it's supposed to do, and does it well.

And what applies to individual consumers certainly applies to businesses. If your core business is manufacturing widgets, do you really want computer engineers on site taking care of your machines, or would you rather have a turnkey system that just sits in the corner and works? To have that turnkey system, someone has to write the code and make sure that it's working, and someone might be needed
to come on site for the initial setup and install, but after that, what's wrong with a machine that just runs?

While some of us enjoy the ins and outs of servers--new installs, performance monitoring, patching, keeping up on the latest trends in the industry, trying out new things--just as many people want to
be able to plug in a machine and have it work. They're tired of feeling dumb because they don't think to scan for viruses or avoid opening every attachment that comes their way. They want to spend their time thinking about their business instead of their business computer.

So where does that leave me? Still busy. The complexity seems to continue to grow in computer rooms, and plenty of people still need help understanding and setting up their servers. However, I have to wonder if it's too farfetched to think that, someday, server complexity will be such that customers can expect to get their machine, plug it in, and have it just work.

Take the Initiative

In a previous AIXchange entry titled, "Some New Virtual Disk Techniques," I said that I usually learn something new whenever I attend or download the Central Region Virtual User Group meetings from developerWorks.

For instance, at the most recent meeting, Janel Barfield gave an excellent presentation on Power Systems Micro-paritioning. Before Janel's presentation began. IBMer Linda Grigoleit took a few minutes to cover material about the IBM Academic Initiative, which is available to high school and university faculty.

From IBM:

"Who can join? Faculty members and research professionals at accredited institutions of learning and qualifying members of standards organizations, all over the globe. Membership is granted on an individual basis. There is no limit on the number of members from an institution that can join."

Check out the downloadable AIX and IBM i courses and imagine a high school or college student taking these classes. With this freely available education, these students would be well on their way to walking in the door of an organization and being productive team members from the beginning of their employment. Think about the head start you would have had you been able to study these Power Systems AIX or these IBM i course topics at that age.

Although as I said in a previous AIXchange entry titled, "You Have to Start Somewhere,"  I like the idea of employees starting out in operations or help desks in organizations, the Academic Initiative is a great way for people to get real-world skills on real operating systems.

Instructors also benefit from the program, as IBM offers them discounts on certification tests, training and either discounted hardware or free remote access to the Power System Connection Center.

There's more. From IBM:

"The Academic Initiative Power Systems team provides vouchers for many IBM instructor-led courses to Academic Initiative members at no cost.

"The IBM Academic Initiative hosts an annual Summer school event for instructors. Each summer this very popular event features topics for those new to IBM i platform."

Maybe it's time you get involved. Go to your local high school or university. Find the instructors who would be interested in learning and teaching this technology. Get them to sign up with the Academic Initiative and get involved. With your skills and experience, you could help them get started, and your ongoing assistance would be appreciated by instructors and students alike.