AIX 6 Update

Another great Central Region Virtual users group meeting was held on Dec. 10. IBM's Jay Kruemcke covered what's new in AIX 6 since the release of TL4. If you missed the meeting, listen to the replay here and get the presentation materials here.

In response to a question about which features worked on which processors and versions of AIX, the organizers also posted this handy chart that details the requirements for enabling features like Live Partition Mobility, WPARs, virtual memory, etc.

Here are some other highlights:

* Workload Partition (WPAR) SAN support--According to Kruemcke, WPARs are able to own SAN devices, allowing WPAR administrators to directly manage their own storage, thus reducing administrative effort and increasing flexibility. So instead of running the lspv command inside of a WPAR and having nothing come back, you can map LUNs directly to your WPAR and use them as you would any other hdisk.

* N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) for Blade--The NPIV capabilities that have existed on our standalone servers are now available for our blade servers. I found this definition online: "NPIV enables a single HBA port to register several unique WWNs with the fabric, each of which can be assigned to an individual virtual machine." I tend to think of NPIV the same way I think of virtual Ethernet, where multiple logical devices use the same physical device.

* Fibre Channel over Ethernet Fibre Channel over Converged Ethernet (or commonly referred to as FC over Ethernet)--Jay says AIX will provide a native 10GB solution, and VIOS will facilitate sharing of this adapter.

* LPAR Mobility Phase 2--Says Jay: "VIOS will preserve slots and device names across Live Partition Mobility operation." Right now when you do a Live Partition Mobility operation, the virtual adapters get renumbered on the destination machine. If you move an LPAR back and forth a few times you can quickly end up needing to re-document which virtual devices are mapped to what.

* VIOS Usability Lightweight backup--This new VIOS option saves off just the customized data (such as device mappings and other pertinent ODM info) in a XML file. This allows backups to process much more quickly. Instead of saving the entire VIOS operating system, you're only saving what you need in order to rebuild your environment. The rest can be restored from install media.

Learn much more by listening to the presentation and the Q&A. Although keeping up with the changes in the operating system can be challenge, these free user group events are another relatively simple way to broaden your knowledge and invest in your career.

In IT, Right is Might

Having previously written about management in "A Tale of Two Managers," I really liked this Computerworld article. Some quotes:

"Geeks are smart and creative, but they are also egocentric, antisocial, managerially and business challenged, victim-prone, bullheaded and credit-whoring. To overcome these intractable behavioral deficits you must do X, Y and Z."

"... my personal experiences working within IT groups have always been quite good, working with IT pros for whom the negative stereotypes just don't seem to apply.”

"Few people notice this, but for IT groups respect is the currency of the realm. IT pros do not squander this currency. Those whom they do not believe are worthy of their respect might instead be treated to professional courtesy, a friendly demeanor or the acceptance of authority. Gaining respect is not a matter of being the boss and has nothing to do with being likeable or sociable; whether you talk, eat or smell right; or any measure that isn't directly related to the work."

There's much more, and I encourage that you read it all, but this idea struck me: I've worked with arrogant people, but I put up with them and their arrogant attitudes because they were really, really smart. I knew that when I asked a question, I'd get the right answer every time, end of story. Sure, I may have wished these people were wrong occasionally, but it never happened. They were always right, and being right demands respect.

The article expresses it this way:

"While everyone would like to work for a nice person who is always right, IT pros will prefer a jerk who is always right over a nice person who is always wrong. Wrong creates unnecessary work, impossible situations and major failures. Wrong is evil, and it must be defeated. Capacity for technical reasoning trumps all other professional factors, period."

Fortunately, I have had the privilege of working with a few nice people who also knew their stuff. These people not only knew what they were talking about, they also patiently took the time to help others understand what they already knew. Yes, they were busy -- in part because they were constantly bombarded with questions from people who were unable or unwilling to find answers on their own. However, rather than berate their questioners, they took the time to help.

Are you a jerk who's always right? Are you nice but often wrong? Are you really nice and really good? Be honest.

Finding a Hidden Gem

While wandering around Chicago recently, I discovered a little museum along the Chicago River. Admission to the McCormick Tribune Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum was only $3, so I figured, "why not?" I went down the stairs (the museum is below street level) and found myself face to face with the gears that are used to raise and lower the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Then, as I climbed some steps, I found myself standing inside the Bridgehouse. From the two-story structure I could look out the windows and watch the tourists go by.

The place was air conditioned. The staffers were friendly. The restrooms were clean. And I was the only visitor. It is a relatively new museum, and no one seems to know about it yet.

From the website:

"The McCormick Tribune Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum is located in the southwest bridge tower of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. A charming space with stunning views… The historic bridge tower is itself a relic of another time, when bridge tenders operated the opening and closing of the bridge from the narrow tower. Visitors to the Bridgehouse Museum are treated to a rare look at the interworkings of the bridge that is lifted by two 100 horse powered engines.”

I wanted to run out and let greater Chicago know what it was missing. The staffers told me how they'd occasionally head to the street level and hand out fliers, but most people would keep walking. They weren't interested in learning more about the bridges or the river. They preferred taking bus and boat tours.

This little museum actually makes me think of AIX. Both are cool, and both are sometimes overlooked by the world around them.

Consider other UNIX systems. I work with Linux. I've always argued that what makes Linux easy to learn is that it's easy to get. Nearly everyone has access to an x86 machine, and you can download and play around with any of several distributions.

And before there was the ubiquitous Linux, there was Solaris. Back when I was in school, Solaris was running all over in universities, so students used it. And because they had access, they could easily make the transition to using Solaris in the business world.

In contrast, getting your hands on Power Systems hardware and copies of AIX can be difficult if you don't already work for a company that has it in-house. It's a vicious circle. People aren't exposed to AIX, so they don't know much about it. Then, when they do get to touch it, it's foreign to them.

Without the hardware at home, and without access to the test lab or sandbox machines, becoming proficient with AIX can be a challenge. Sure, employers can send folks to formal classes, and I encourage that. But once classes conclude, IT pros still need access test hardware to continue to learn.

Even the high quality of AIX and Power hardware, in a sense, keeps users away from the systems. At many sites the systems are installed by a consultant, and they run with little care or feeding. So people become afraid to touch them, since no one wants to be responsible for causing an outage by fiddling with an enterprise application running on enterprise hardware.

On the other hand, people who do get to know AIX really, really like it as I blooged about in "AIX Tops in ITIC User Survey." And efforts like the IBM Academic Initiative help bridge this gap for educators and students.

I guess most tourists in Chicago will continue to flock to the popular and well-known bus and boat rides. That's fine.

As for AIX, I'll continue to beat this drum and tell people to find out what they're missing. At least in the computer world, we AIX users appreciate our hidden gem.

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.

Communication Matters, Even for Techies

I often wonder how many readers of this blog are hard-core technical people. You live and work heads-down on the raised floor, doing the "real" work. You generally don't deal with bean counters or management types because your immediate supervisor shields you from all that business-specific nonsense.

That's an easy attitude to have. Machines are the heart and soul of any business, and what you do is critical to your enterprise's survival. On top of that, you've worked hard to get where you are. You have spent many years acquiring skills and knowledge. You read Redbooks. You get continual technical education. You hammer away on test machines. Your problem solving skills are top notch. You've spent years acquiring education and gaining experience. But there is more to your job than machines. Do you ever consider your "soft" skills?

I constantly hear that knowledge is power. But the inability to effectively share knowledge saps much of that power. We need to articulate what we know. We need to write accurate documentation, compose coherent e-mail messages and communicate effectively using instant messenger programs. We need to convey ideas during staff meetings and conference calls. We need to get in front of groups and give presentations.

I heard those messages when I was going to school, but I didn't think they applied to me. I was going to be crawling around raised floors, pulling cables and physically installing servers into racks. Giving presentations? That was for management and sales and marketing.

It turns out that I was very wrong. Technical skills are valuable, but so is the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical people. We need to inform others that, sometimes, downtime is essential, because we need that window to apply patches or do other important work. We need to articulate that the tools we need benefit the business, and aren't merely fancy toys that we want to play with. We need to be able to convince higher-ups to budget for things that will make our jobs easier.

Even for the technical, communication is part of the job. And communicating is something that even the technical can learn.

Of course for most people, technical or not, getting in front of one’s supervisor, a group of coworkers or a roomful of people can be unnerving. Jerry Seinfeld had a great bit about public speaking: "According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy."

If public speaking spooks you more than your mortality, you can conquer those fears. One option to consider is Toastmasters International. From the Web site:

"Most Toastmasters meetings are comprised of approximately 20 people who meet weekly for an hour or two. Participants practice and learn skills by filling a meeting role, ranging from giving a prepared speech or an impromptu one to serving as timer, evaluator or grammarian."

It's a given that we need to grow our technical skills, but it's just as important to develop our presentation and communication skills.

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.