Slashdot Mirror


Oracle Joins IBM AIX Collaboration Center

pgsqlDao writes "CRN is reporting that Oracle is joining IBM's AIX Collaboration Center. 'IBM announced the center Dec. 16 as a $200 million investment where it will centralize AIX development, customer relations and advanced features for independent software vendors. While the figure represents existing salaries and equipment drawn together under one roof, it also represents some shift in emphasis by IBM from Linux back to its mature Unix operating system.' In November Oracle announced that it has chosen Solaris 10 as it's preferred development and deployment platform for X64 computing."

91 comments

  1. Not necessarily a shift by gee_unix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    it also represents some shift in emphasis by IBM from Linux back to its mature Unix operating system

    This isn't necessarily a shift. Linux is perfect for many, many applications but there are a lot of applications and installations out there that are still relying on AIX. Even Linux users should be heartened to hear that IBM won't abandon their customers lightly.

    Look how long they supported OS/2!

    --
    A monster ate my homework!
    1. Re:Not necessarily a shift by Amiga+Trombone · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This isn't necessarily a shift. Linux is perfect for many, many applications but there are a lot of applications and installations out there that are still relying on AIX.

      I'd agree. Linux is great for commodity x86 servers, but on IBM's high-end hardware AIX stands head and shoulders above it. I don't really see a shift here - actually, I'd say AIX has never been away. If you look at the last few releases, you can see IBM has been putting a lot of effort into improving it. The hard work is starting to pay off in increased market share.

    2. Re:Not necessarily a shift by jackb_guppy · · Score: 2, Informative

      Very much agreed.

      With AIX it is one of 3 OS that IBM supports native on the iSeries lines; OS/400, AIX, Linux. With its pSeries line AIX and Linux are both supported. pSeries is a "daughter" or "sister" line of iSeries.

      Both of the lines and have 1 or more OS running at the same time on the same box, each acting as it own machine and talking to the other OSs in the box on a 54G back plane.

      Differently shows the power of Power5 and hardware design.

    3. Re:Not necessarily a shift by irtza · · Score: 1

      also, IBM is a hardware company at heart. Having a wide array of supported and high quality software only helps sales. If they have to play nice with other vendors or a broad array of hardware, they can offer Linux. If they want software optimized for that particular hardware and that has a long history of proven reliability, they still fully support AIX. Considering how recent some of the enterprise grade features have been put into Linux, there are many who would hold off switching to it.

      --
      When all else fails, try.
    4. Re:Not necessarily a shift by TallMatthew · · Score: 3, Informative
      Linux is great for commodity x86 servers, but on IBM's high-end hardware AIX stands head and shoulders above it.

      That's sort of true.

      I worked not too long ago for a company with an 8xCPU, 12TB Oracle instance running on RedHat Linux 3.0 (32bit). It worked perfectly well, but we were bottlenecked on CPU and memory (needed to move to 64bit) and wanted to hook a SAN up to it (before that we ran it over NFS, which works believe it or not). We tried to find a combination of 64-bit Linux, Oracle and Veritas (to manage volumes on the SAN) to run on the high-end Linux hardware available but there just wasn't enough out there at that point.

      We ended up moving the DB to AIX, at the strong urging of IBM, on whose server the bottlenecked Oracle instance had been running. They were far more motivated to sell us a RISC box than they were to try and find a Linux solution (the profit margin was substantially higher) and we knew that, but we couldn't find the combination we needed to move forward with Linux. IBM went to a lot of trouble to show us benchmarks that showed AIX was superior to Linux, which says a lot about their Linux strategy, namely it's all well and good until it steals market share from their high-margin products.

      It's possible IBM shifted policy after they got burned on 64bit Itaniums. At that same job I was on, they had put one in, wanting to increase Oracle's addressable memory space, but the performance of the CPUs was so abysmal they ended up moving backwards to P4s and 32bit, which as I mentioned did the job until the application finally bottlenecked. At the time we purchased the AIX box from them, they didn't have any x86 boxes in their pipeline that would run 64bit Linux (they had a new xseries that would scale past eight of those 32bit CPUs with 64bit extensions I believe, but it wouldn't run 64bit Linux), so it's possible they've clipped the higher-end x86 boxes from their offerings altogether in order to keep AIX viable in this enterprise market.

      What IBM does or does not do should always be taken with a grain of salt.

    5. Re:Not necessarily a shift by stevesliva · · Score: 1
      Linux is great for commodity x86 servers, but on IBM's high-end hardware AIX stands head and shoulders above it.

      AIX provides IBM a guaranteed path to providing a kernel enabling those high-end hardware features. Sure, everything may get into Linux eventually, but AIX milestones are a bit more predictable for IBM.
      --
      Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
    6. Re:Not necessarily a shift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Not only that, IBM has got contracts with very important people (think: national governments and security forces around the world) which obligate them to continue to support and develop AIX until 2020. Even if IBM believed that Linux was the only future of operating systems (and it doesn't; monocultures are never good), it cannot even think about winding up AIX for another 15 years.

    7. Re:Not necessarily a shift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > What IBM does or does not do should always be taken with a grain of salt.

      well, sure that's as true is it is of sun, hp, microsoft, dell, or whomever.

      But keep in mind that you were running Oracle over NFS - which is wacky, not recommended, and could certainly work better or worse on aix vs linux. Who knows? Maybee linux nfs implementation is faster than aix's. But more importantly - who cares? Nobody uses nfs on new implementations today anyway.

      IBM did get screwed in believing in Itanium. Their 64-bit strategy was hosed on the intel side - since they waited for that to pan out. They've gone to 64-bit AMD for their blade servers, and then still have the itaniums.

      Not sure that this is in order to push people towards aix though: it isn't like everyone raced to build AMD 64-bit servers the moment that architecture became available. In my experience, if you really need to be on 64-bit hardware (for memory addressibility) you'll probably be better off on a real unix anyway. This isn't about margins, but about scalability/robustness/and maturity. If it didn't work well in your case it may have more to do with the odd requirements than the vendor.

    8. Re:Not necessarily a shift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Nobody uses nfs on new implementations today anyway

      Oh really? NetApp Customer Stories

      There's several (mostly unknown) companies and orgs not even on this list with ongoing IP SAN projects using NFS as their storage protocol.

    9. Re:Not necessarily a shift by Rebar · · Score: 1

      For Oracle, in terms of CPU power and memory bandwidth, HP's DL585 with four dual-core Opterons running Linux in 64-bit mode is a very attractive option. Getting it to work with a SAN is a challenge, but if you can get similar Oracle performance with locally attached storage and save many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the processes, it might be worth looking into.

      I don't work for HP or AMD or IBM, but the DL585 absolutely makes Oracle fly. Any company still pursuing high performance computing on Itanium or P4 is barking up the wrong tree, HP included.

    10. Re:Not necessarily a shift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why buy from a mediocre company? See below..

      [ SOURCE: Excerpt from Sun's x64 Hardware Q&A ]

      Q: "HP also offers an AMD Opteron four-way processor. What's the advantage of buying from Sun?"

      A: "The Sun Fire V40z server outperforms HP's AMD Opteron four-way processor-based product (the DL585). The V40z also offers a number of superior features to the DL585; for example, the V40z supports faster DDR333 memory, whereas the DL585 only supports older and slower DDR266 memory."

      Given the lackluster trackrecord of previous offerings from HP, I recommend persuing Sun's implimentation of AMD x64 hardware.

  2. Unix isn't dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    SCO has been trying to argue that by promoting Linux, IBM has killed off its Unix business. They want billions of dollars in damages. This development shows that both IBM and Oracle don't think Unix is dead. SCO's business is dead because they have the bad habit of suing their customers not because Unix is going extinct.

    1. Re:Unix isn't dead by rubycodez · · Score: 2, Insightful

      SCO was dying long before that, no real innovation. Couldn't make it as a technology company, so they're trying their hand at being a litigation company.

    2. Re:Unix isn't dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      They want billions of dollars in damages.


      Any pointers?

    3. Re:Unix isn't dead by rm69990 · · Score: 1

      Are you talking about Caldera or OldSCO when you say they couldn't make it as a technology company? Two seperate companies, remember.

      Guess it doesn't really matter, both companies were utter failures.

    4. Re:Unix isn't dead by UniverseIsADoughnut · · Score: 1

      Did SCO ever sue a customer? Seam to remember them only going after other linux providers.

    5. Re:Unix isn't dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you sincerely for that pointless post.

  3. fickle by rubycodez · · Score: 1

    Just a year ago, the preferred direction as declared by Oracle was Linux boxes as a "grid" building block. IBM was pushing Linux. Sun has been schizo regarding x86 and ultrasparc and Linux support for a few years now.

  4. Re:Bush lied, 2K died by DigitalReality · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    We can't impeach you. We don't know who you are.

  5. AIX Vs. Solaris by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    AIX service and applications are more profitible for IBM than are Linux services. I would bet that shoring up AIX is in repsonse to Sun's greater emphasis on Solaris. Both are formidible for large enterprise applications, but Solaris is now open source and picking up steam. This will be interesting to watch as two giants duke it out.

    Who says non-Linux UNIX OS's are dead? Far from it.

    1. Re:AIX Vs. Solaris by IvyKing · · Score: 1
      I would bet that shoring up AIX is in repsonse to Sun's greater emphasis on Solaris.

      I would amend that to say "Sun's greater emphasis on Solaris for x86, specifically AMD64". The Opteron boxes have very nice price/performance.

      It will be interesting to watch them duke it out - done right, both may benefit. If IBM really wants to compete, they need to start selling low cost workstations to encourage further development on AIX. This could prove beneficial to the OSS community as well - having to debug porting issues with software is probably much more effective at maintaining the quality of code than having thousands of eyeballs looking over the code.

    2. Re:AIX Vs. Solaris by kpharmer · · Score: 1

      > It will be interesting to watch them duke it out - done right, both may benefit. If IBM really wants to compete,
      > they need to start selling low cost workstations to encourage further development on AIX.

      They've got them, and as low as $5,575. Though I think they are primarily intended for unix graphics packages like Catia:
            http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/intellistation/power /

      They've also got very low cost power5 servers that start at $3700:
            http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/hardware/entry

      There's not much of a price difference between these and intel boxes. And they can run either AIX or Linux. In fact, with the P510 (around $5k) you should be able to run multiple lpars, including linux lpars. Pretty cool stuff.

    3. Re:AIX Vs. Solaris by njcoder · · Score: 2, Interesting
      "They've got them, and as low as $5,575. Though I think they are primarily intended for unix graphics packages like Catia: http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/intellistation/power /"

      I don't know what you uconsider low cost workstations, but something starting at 5,575 doesn't seem to qualify as low cost. If you want to run a real Unix on a supported platform Sun's workstations start out a lot cheaper and similarly loaded workstations are cheaper. http://store.sun.com/CMTemplate/CEServlet?process= SunStore&cmdViewProduct_CP&catid=48612 AMD workstations start out as little as 895 and UltraSparc based workstations go for as little as 1,395. They can run Solaris 10 as well as RedHat and Suse. Similarly, you can get Sparc and AMD based servers from Sun for under a grand. Being able to run multiple lpars may be cost effective if you want to run multiple lpars but if you want to have one affordable server for development.

    4. Re:AIX Vs. Solaris by IvyKing · · Score: 1
      The other area where IBM needs to catch up with Sun is software licensing - I can download Solaris 10 and Studio 11 for free - support does require real money ($120 per socket per year for Sol 10 and somethinh like $900/year for Studio 11). I would be very surprised if IBM's compiler collection wasn't able to run rings around GCC for AIX on Power - having IBM match Sun's licensing could do wonders for the number of people porting to AIX.

      What would make things really interesting if Sun carries out its threat to port Solaris to Power (Joerg Schilling is already porting his OpenSolaris distro, SchilliX, to PowerPC). Sun did have a port back in the Sol 2.5.1 days which included the development tools.

    5. Re:AIX Vs. Solaris by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I disagree...

      LPARs are only "cool" if you enjoy shutting down all partitions and powering down the system in order to service a failed CPU, memory, I/O drawer, or PCI adapter, or even add a new domain. Plus, LPARs depend upon Hypervisor, a layer of firmware that manages OS instances. This layer of software is a single point of failure for all of the OS instances--if the Hypervisor layer goes down, all the OS instances can go down.

      Sun's Dynamic System Domains do not have a Hypervisor layer, so there is no single point of failure like there is with LPARs. And unlike Dynamic System Domains, LPARs share I/O systems, which limits workload separation and security isolation from a denial-of-service standpoint.

      Still think LPARs are cool, eh?

    6. Re:AIX Vs. Solaris by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. These systems are very viable. One of the biggest problems that Linux under the GNU/GPL licence solved was extreme fragmentation in the Unix space. Linux is the great common denominator. Microsoft learned the word "INCOMPATIBLE" from IBM, and IBM learned it from the many flavors of Unix that couldn't work with each other. One set of hardware, and specific software to run on it. Linux runs on 30 architectures (very well), and offers "COMPATIBLE" services. I remember listening to a former Unix company that developed a huge amount of graphics software and hardware. They lamented that every version of Unix was different, and all of the software had to be changed massively for systems to work together (disgruntled, they moved all of their products to Microsoft). I remember AT&T going after people who bought a (large scale) computer at auction, did not have any computer know-how, and were offering the software for sale (AT&T Unix). The lawyers were all over the guy. Technically unix based systems work well, but the only reason anyone bothers talking about unix anymore is because of Linux. Bickering and in-fighting made the entire unix camp, a house divided. Its odd that the software that comes to redeem these disparate one-off vendors and basically save their bacon, is the thing that unix vendors bellyache about the most. How many of them would be dead already if Linux didn't come along? I know that systems never really die (Microsoft still claims 3% of thier licencing revenue from windows 3.1). But how many people would be talking about unix in any kind of growth sort of way without Linux?

    7. Re:AIX Vs. Solaris by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wrong

      you don't have to reboot to change a pci adapter, not positive about replacing a failed cpu or entire io drawer. Though it's tough to imagine why you'd replace an io drawer. And I haven't seen a failed CPU on power4 or power5 ever.

      > And unlike Dynamic System Domains, LPARs share I/O systems, which limits workload separation and security isolation from a denial-of-service standpoint.

      wrong again. sharing io is just an option. You can set up an io serving lpar if you want - so that your twenty or so lpars don't require dedicate io adapters (applies to network as well as storage, btw). However, it isn't required. Each lpar can have its own dedicated storage.

      And as far as sun is concerned, i'll pay more attention to what they're doing when it looks more like they'll survive. I hope they do, but don't plan to spend cash on their products until then.

  6. I agree, but... by WindBourne · · Score: 1

    the reason why Oracle went with Sun is because Sun was basically supporting OSS as well. Oracle is just as panicked about OSS databases as Sun is about OSS OSs. And while IBM can lose AIX, Sun can lose Solaris, Oracle will die if oracle the DB dies.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    1. Re:I agree, but... by laffer1 · · Score: 1

      You are right and yet oracle will not support more operating systems. FreeBSD is quite popular for webserver use. There is no oracle for freebsd. I've never been able to get a recent version to run on freebsd and its most likely their stupid specific version of the jvm is required installer. (freebsd's linux emulation)

      If oracle doesn't want to die, they need to grow. MySQL releases BINARIES for freebsd. Why can't oracle?

    2. Re:I agree, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You think Oracle should spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for development and testing on a platform that maybe five customers will deploy on? You have a thing or two to learn about business.

    3. Re:I agree, but... by laffer1 · · Score: 1

      I'm not expecting every processor and os architecture. I'm expecting common hosting environments that business runs on! I think enough businesses run FreeBSD on i386 to warrent a release. They support Mac OS X server dont they? How many people use that? I bet more run FreeBSD than OSX server. I say this and I am an mac os sys admin professionally.

    4. Re:I agree, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    5. Re:I agree, but... by rubycodez · · Score: 1

      you don't use the Oracle installer to install Oracle on FreeBSD

      People have run Oracle 9i, see this or use Google

  7. AIX is legacy only by mangu · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Having worked with both, I must say that Linux is way better, in all respects. However there may be some legacy applications that still need AIX, although I can't think of any right now.


    I do remember one application where I worked that needed AIX: Oracle version 7 had something they called "pro*fortran", that allowed one to embed SQL statements in FORTRAN. (yes, the FORTRAN spelling is correct, because it was FORTRAN-77, not Fortran-90). In Oracle 8, AFAIK the first version that had a Linux version, pro*fortran was dropped. So, in my experience, the one situation where you need AIX is if you have FORTRAN-77 programs with embedded SQL statements.

    1. Re:AIX is legacy only by sedawkgrep · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Aside from GNU utils (which AIX does have packages for), what on earth does Linux have that's 'way better, in all respects' ?

      As a long-time sysadmin for AIX and Linux, I find this laughable at best. AIX has so many enterprise-level tools and resources that are so well-developed, that Linux, IMNSHO is still far FAR behind.

      So please, enlighten us.

      --
      Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
    2. Re:AIX is legacy only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You obviously didn't do much with AIX. I'm guessing you failed to use the logical volume manager any, otherwise, you wouldn't say that "Linux is way better".

      Troll. And an informed one at that.

    3. Re:AIX is legacy only by kpharmer · · Score: 1

      > Having worked with both, I must say that Linux is way better, in all respects.

      What are you comparing? AIX 4.3 to RHEL 3?

      AIX is now on v5.2 & v5.3.

      I find that I keep my db2 servers on aix even though db2 also supports linux. The better logical volume management, firmware reporting, etc makes it a slightly better platform. I haven't benchmarked the two but would expect AIX to be the fastest. And perhaps most importantly - the fewer patches means that it costs far less to support.

      Why did you find linux better? Even the gnu tools are now commonly installed on aix.

      ken

    4. Re:AIX is legacy only by mangu · · Score: 1
      I'm guessing you failed to use the logical volume manager any, otherwise, you wouldn't say that "Linux is way better".


      I admit I've never used LVM, in either Linux or AIX. Considering the price of hard disk storage these days, it's much easier to buy a new, bigger disk with the needed physical capacity than to manage an old array of disks.


      And if you mention the cost of buying a new disk, I must answer with the much bigger cost of buying new software. What people often fail to consider when comparing commercial systems with free/gratis software is the effort needed to justify acquisitions. When I need a new package in Linux I either "apt-get install" or "./configure; make; make install" it.


      I don't need to go to the lengthy and troublesome process of filling forms, attending meetings for the next year software budget, editing spreadsheets, etc, etc, that's inherent to commercial software.

    5. Re:AIX is legacy only by orasio · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Linux is a kernel.
      GNU/Linux, although it's usually called just "Linux", has its bigger strength in GNU.
      Of course, the GNU system is the best of modern unix-like systems.
      If AIX uses GNU, then when using AIX you would be using a core part of what comprises a GNU/Linux system, or, as most people call it, a "Linux" system.
      I know AIX has some "enterprise-class" features, useful for IBM buyers, that GNU/Linux doesn't. That's why it's good to have GNU/AIX!! :)

    6. Re:AIX is legacy only by Tet · · Score: 1
      I admit I've never used LVM, in either Linux or AIX. Considering the price of hard disk storage these days, it's much easier to buy a new, bigger disk with the needed physical capacity than to manage an old array of disks.

      Had you used LVM, you'd know that it's more than just a matter of buying a bigger disk when you run out of space. I can't imagine using a system without LVM now. All of my Linux boxen (both desktop and servers) use LVM. Curiously, some of my production Solaris servers don't (for our specialised applications, it's not necessary), although we do where appropriate -- DB servers being the obvious example.

      --
      "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
    7. Re:AIX is legacy only by twiddlingbits · · Score: 1

      Be careful bragging about AIX, it's not at the head of the UNIX class. Solaris 10 kicks AIX butt in features and performance. Solaris10 is also Open Source and runs on X86 boxes all the way to E20K 72CPU machines. AIX is not free, Solaris 10 and Linux are free to users (maintenance is extra, unless you chose to get it via the LUGs or other sources) Linux is a very good choice for a Small/Medium Business environment and even for some desktops. Right now Linux does not scale really well once you get past about 16 CPUs.

    8. Re:AIX is legacy only by mangu · · Score: 1
      Had you used LVM, you'd know that it's more than just a matter of buying a bigger disk when you run out of space.


      OK. I'll byte: what is exactly the advantage in LVM? What is it that LVM, in either Linux or AIX, provides? If it's a simple matter of growing capacity, why isn't a bigger disk (very cheap) better than spending any time at all in configuring LVM? For more complex applications, wouldn't RAID be better?

    9. Re:AIX is legacy only by rm69990 · · Score: 1

      Better compare that to RHEL 4 instead of 3 while you're at it :-P

    10. Re:AIX is legacy only by kpharmer · · Score: 1

      > Better compare that to RHEL 4 instead of 3 while you're at it :-P

      dang! i hate mistakes like that.

    11. Re:AIX is legacy only by kpharmer · · Score: 2, Informative

      > Solaris 10 kicks AIX butt in features and performance.

      Do you know of any public benchmarks that would show this? I know that AIX 5.3 on Power5 is almost 50% faster than AIX 5.2...

      And more to the point - IBM is much healthier than Sun, and much more likely to be around in 10 years.

      > AIX is not free, Solaris 10 and Linux are free to users (maintenance is extra, unless you chose to get it
      > via the LUGs or other sources)

      That's not really accurate. You *can* get a free linux distribution, but quite often you'll find that applications require RedHat or Suse. And RHEL4 is more expensive than AIX.

      > Linux is a very good choice for a Small/Medium Business environment and even for some desktops.

      Sure, I'd actually recommend both. Want to run websevers or print servers? Linux works fine. Want to run critical app or database servers? AIX is a better fit. Obviously linux will be better on desktops or laptops.

      > Right now Linux does not scale really well once you get past about 16 CPUs.

      That seems to be a diminishing issue: the big driver of massive SMPs was Oracle, and they've headed towards a more distributed architecture. It certainly doesn't matter at all for db2 or informix - where they have for years supported more of a beowulf-like clustering approach.

    12. Re:AIX is legacy only by superpulpsicle · · Score: 1

      I don't think any of these companies IBM, HP, Sun has made the same level of progress linux has in the past 3 or 4 years. Maybe the massive layoffs had something to do with it? Maybe the extreme outsourcing?

    13. Re:AIX is legacy only by twiddlingbits · · Score: 1

      Yes, there are quite a few on Sun's web page. Look down at the bottom of this page: http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/index.jsp Sun has over $5B in the bank, they are not going anywhere. They are the largest supplier of computers to the US Gov't. Comparing Standard plans, RHEL is about $799/yr maintenance. AIX is $299. (IBM web site). Solaris 10 is $240 (Sun web site) However, there ARE a lot of small shops that will use the 'Net as the source for Maintenance. RIsky in my opinon. Linux works very well as web/print servers. Lightweight tasks it handles well. Actually SMPs still are hot, there are problems where it fits well. Oracle runs just fine on SMPs or on distributed. You really need to know more about HOW a company uses Oracle to tell which way they should go. Beowolf clusters where all the machines are connected in a "network" and the scheduling is managed centrally. That's good for problems that can be broken into parallel threads that can come back together (synchronize) as needed. I can't think of a General Purpose business problem that can be that parallelized to take advantage of this approach. There are certainly problems in Science that can be done this way. Genetics comes to mind. Graphics (high end rendering) can also benefit.

    14. Re:AIX is legacy only by twiddlingbits · · Score: 1

      Check out Solaris 10 and other new products from Sun before you assume that. Also, Linux is a WORLDWIDE development effort, which obviously has folks working on something 24x7. Other software products don't have this "staff" for development. There is still a lot of corporations that do NOT embrace (and will not embrace) the open-source concepts of Linux. So that limits Linux use in Corporate computing. However, on the desktop, Linux is GREAT. It kicks Windows butt.

    15. Re:AIX is legacy only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Sun has over $5B in the bank, they are not going anywhere.

      How many months can they live on that? 5B is a lot of cash, but not so much to a company the size of sun.

      > Beowolf clusters where all the machines are connected in a "network" and the scheduling is managed
      > centrally. That's good for problems that can be broken into parallel threads that can come back together
      > (synchronize) as needed. I can't think of a General Purpose business problem that can be that parallelized
      > to take advantage of this approach.

      It is very common in data warehousing, reporting, and data mining - where teradata, informix, and db2 have been doing this for 10+ years.

    16. Re:AIX is legacy only by Diag · · Score: 1

      Linux had a lot of catching up to do.

      --
      Serving Suggestion: Defrost
    17. Re:AIX is legacy only by thanasakis · · Score: 1

      At their current rate, probably 20 years :-)

      They almost broke even last year.

    18. Re:AIX is legacy only by DrunkenPenguin · · Score: 1

      HP-UX has way more enterprise level tools than AIX could ever offer. And most of these tools are either already ported to Linux or will be ported in near future. Ever heard of HP Serviceguard? No buddy, it's not something you can eat.

      Your comment "I find this laughable at best" makes _you_ look laughable to say the least.

    19. Re:AIX is legacy only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google paid $50 for a red hat linux cd. No support. They run exclusively on linux.

    20. Re:AIX is legacy only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Google paid $50 for a red hat linux cd. No support. They run exclusively on linux.

      and Red Hat disappears in a pull of logic as an annonymous poster informs the world that nobody need pay their license fees!

    21. Re:AIX is legacy only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually it was the lack of "all and sundry" cruft that keeps Linux nimble. "Oh, I want everything in there" you state, and they can shove everything in there, much like TSS/360. However like TSS/360, when you shove everything in there and try to offer something that covers every last user (and that thing consumes memory and system resources), the system slows down. I've heard your arguement from the Solaris people too. Linux doesn't have rarely used feature X, therefore, it's unusable. But by moving rarely used feature X from kernel space to user space, (and not just that rarely used feature, but all of the .00001% items), the system runs more quickly. IBM claims that AIX benchmarks better than Linux. It might be true, I haven't seen their benchmarks (every man's dog has benchmarked their system against Linux over the past several years, and Microsofts 'Facts' campaign claims that it's systems are a million times faster...although independent surveys find otherwise. The last database/transaction benchmark I saw showed Linux besting Solaris10. I don't know if AIX was part of the test. What I do know (for certain) is that Linux will continue to be developed and improved, regardless of economic factors or political motivations, runs extremely well, and has an infinately better bang for the buck than all comers. If you have a specific feature request that you find terrably wanting, you can always request that specific feature (or set of features), and see if the kernel developers include it into the main kernel, or if someone writes it and makes it available as a patch (not a microsoft-style binary one, but a standard text/code based one). The last time I used AIX, I wasn't that impressed. OS/2 had a better user interface. MVS/XA had better features and could be run on larger systems. It was more intuitive than VMS, but less so than Linux. As for Linux running on large systems, please see the top500.org operating system database. Anything that IBM isn't pushing AIX on, is running Linux (and Linux has the overwhelming majority of the systems listed). Like most unix vendors, their business is to bash Linux because Linux kills thier business. It's harder to bash Linux in recent years, because it does benchmark so terribly well. (My opinion isn't that humble either, I have built (compiled), and pulled bugs out of various operating systems before, and will likely continue to do so in the future).

    22. Re:AIX is legacy only by sedawkgrep · · Score: 1

      Moron...we're talking about Linux vs. AIX...and no, I haven't heard of Service guard, but unless it comprises:

      - robust LVM+mgmt tools (which sistina's LVM is not yet)
      - HACMP-level clustering+mgmt tools
      - true virtualization of hardware including dynamicity and scheduling
      - and oh, the other zillion other things that AIX has that makes managing it a dream. ...then I think your point, however offtopic, is still inaccurate.

      --
      Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
    23. Re:AIX is legacy only by sloanster · · Score: 1

      kpharmer said: Sure, I'd actually recommend both. Want to run websevers or print servers? Linux works fine. Want to run critical app or database servers? AIX is a better fit. Obviously linux will be better on desktops or laptops.

      The "print server" comment sounds like some FUD from the late 90s.

      Do you have any evidence to support your statement that AIX is somehow better than linux for databases or critical apps? Sure, you can use AIX for those things - but linux is certainly a viable choice. With 30 million customers and 24x7 operation, amazon.com seems to indicate that linux does a fine job powering web services and back end databases.

      AIX somehow "better"? Sure it's mature and stable, but it is showing its age, and it is a bit eccentric. And note that IBM is careful never to compare AIX performance against a 2.6 kernel on similar hardware - but they are always quite keen to show the scalability of AIX as compared to the obsolete 2.4 kernel.

      BTW I see we are still trotting out the old "low end x86" spiel - that is really tired, BTW. SGI will sell you a 256 CPU, 64 bit linux server right now if you've got a million bucks.

      And what about the fact that linux is dominating the supercomputing space? can anyone really imagine that we are still talking about "low end x86"?

      I think some dinosaurs see their way of life threatened by linux, so the dismissal of linux' capabilities is a perfecly understandable psychological defense mechanism. I trust that time will teach these folks a lesson or two.

    24. Re:AIX is legacy only by kpharmer · · Score: 1

      > Do you have any evidence to support your statement that AIX is somehow better than linux for databases or critical apps?

      Sure, it's the reference platform for db2, has a great logical volume manager, and has far fewer patches than linux. Note that if I was running a lot of critical oracle I'd be leaning towards Solaris for similar reasons. Note also that the difference in patch frequency can result in a cost difference of a few thousand dollars a year in admin labor.

      > Sure, you can use AIX for those things - but linux is certainly a viable choice. With 30 million customers and 24x7
      > operation, amazon.com seems to indicate that linux does a fine job powering web services and back end databases.

      You're confusing issues. Of course you can support mission critical applications on linux. But that doesn't mean it is the easiest and currently best way to go for everyone.

      > AIX somehow "better"? Sure it's mature and stable, but it is showing its age, and it is a bit eccentric.

      It's always been a bit eccentric. As linux gets more popular AIX will have to change to keep up - you can already feel minor differences with simple utilities falling behind - like cron (doesn't support time equations, etc). But since gnu utilities are now provided on aix it is helping. And I can generally live with these issues in return for the mature and stable parts. Especially for a database server.

      > And what about the fact that linux is dominating the supercomputing space? can anyone really imagine that we are still talking about "low end x86"?

      Linux is now dominating the supercomputing space when it comes to MPP architectures - machines that can be built from a highspeed internal network along with thousands of share-nothing nodes. First off, this architecture has existed almost unchanged since 1994 or so. Secondly, this only really helps satisfy some supercomputing needs - where you can divide the problem nicely into separate pieces. Third, it's a simple matter of economics. Note that this architecture was initially developed for super-computing, but then sold most of its units for large-scale databases. Where it can make more sense to use a two-way P5 than a two-way opteron.

      But today when I need to support a financial database on a pair of redundant servers, I'm going to heavily lean towards aix or solaris (assuming db2 or oracle). What works in an MPP environment doesn't apply here. This will probably change in five years, but for now it holds.

      > I think some dinosaurs see their way of life threatened by linux, so the dismissal of linux' capabilities is a
      > perfecly understandable psychological defense mechanism. I trust that time will teach these folks a lesson or two.

      I think that it's unfortunate that some linux advocates are unable to accept the idea that any OS can be better at anything than Linux. Even admitting that linux will probably surpass unix in five years isn't enough - they demand that you admit that it is in all ways better than unix right now.

      There's really no room for dogma in IT.

    25. Re:AIX is legacy only by sloanster · · Score: 1

      kpharmer says: I think that it's unfortunate that some linux advocates are unable to accept the idea that any OS can be better at anything than Linux. Even admitting that linux will probably surpass unix in five years isn't enough - they demand that you admit that it is in all ways better than unix right now.

      Yes, that is unfortunate - or would be I suppose, except that I've never met any linux users with the mindset you describe. We do feel, though, that this supposed gap in (performance/stability/enterprise-readiness) between linux and it's elder brethren is a bit overstated.

      It's common knowledge that Linus will not tolerate any kernel modifications that increase performance on high-end machines at the expense of the common case. This may not be the absolute best decision for the 32-way database server, but it makes good sense for the vast majority of usage scenarios. Unlike AIX, Linux will never be optimized strictly for high-end hardware - Linux doesn't have that luxury, nor that narrow a niche.

      Even though it must perform well over a broad range of hardware scale and capability, that doesn't mean that Linux is neccesarily a slouch on high-end hardware. It just means that kernel modfications to enhance high-end performance must be clever enough that they don't harm low-end performance. This requires more skill and more effort, and it takes longer for high end performance enhancements to make their way into the main tree, but the results are worth it in the long run.

      Ill gladly concede absolute optimization of Linux performance for extreme high end hardware, if it means that it performs respectably in 99% of real life situations.

  8. AIX pronunciation guide by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's pronounced "aches", just in case anybody is wondering.

  9. I think not by stoolpigeon · · Score: 1

    IBM will gaurantee a transaction level with Oracle on AIX that they say they may gaurantee at some point in the future on Linux. I don't think this is just marketing to keep selling AIX, I really think it is still a better platform for a certain level of service.

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
  10. a survival strategy ... by constantnormal · · Score: 1

    ... Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

  11. Attention Slashdot editors: Edit is a verb. by Radak · · Score: 2, Informative

    And "it's" is not a possessive pronoun.

  12. 1 reason companies run AIX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  13. aches by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Truly. What a POS OS... the least user-friendly surviving Unix I've used in years of porting.

  14. Low Hanging Fruit by Greyfox · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Want to make AIX (Or any of the other commercial unices) better instantly? Jettison all those crappy old AT&T utilities and replace them with their GNU counterparts. While functionality has been added to the commercial utilities only when necessary, the people working on the GNU variants have been adding useful features all along. The GNU variants are also more stable than their commercial counterparts.

    Another big win would be to replace the generally crappy packaging systems with something like apt. A few companies have made a stab at implementing package systems that work around dependency hell, but I've never encountered one that works as well as apt does. And I'd sooner dig my eyeballs out of my head with toothpicks rather than work with SMIT ever again...

    Those two steps alone would make commercial unices a lot nicer to deal with. While the other UNIX variants may be more mature than Linux in the kernel department, they are DECADES behind in the user interface arena. OSX being a noteworthy exception.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    1. Re:Low Hanging Fruit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While the other UNIX variants may be more mature than Linux in the kernel department, they are DECADES behind in the user interface arena. OSX being a noteworthy exception.

      Yeah, it's DECADES behind in the kernel department! Mach, YUCK!!!

    2. Re:Low Hanging Fruit by Chemicalscum · · Score: 1
      Jettison all those crappy old AT&T utilities and replace them with their GNU counterparts.

      I thought that with AIX 5L (L for Linux compatible) that IBM had provided a GNU userland.

    3. Re:Low Hanging Fruit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Huh, I actually prefer the SysV userland over that skitzo, over-featured GNU stuff. How can you take seriously crap that dosen't support the whell group because the authors believe that restricting who can su root is too restrictive to the users.

    4. Re:Low Hanging Fruit by ClosedSource · · Score: 1

      "Jettison all those crappy old AT&T utilities and replace them with their GNU counterparts."

      Yeah, what the hell does AT&T know about Unix anyway? It's not like they invented it or anything.

    5. Re:Low Hanging Fruit by anothy · · Score: 1
      Want to make AIX (Or any of the other commercial unices) better instantly? Jettison all those crappy old AT&T utilities and replace them with their GNU counterparts.
      if by "better" you mean "worse, incompatible, and broken", sure, go ahead. the behavior of the existing tools are there in large part because loads of applications (commercial and in-house, binaries and scripts) rely on the existing behavior. further, note that the AT&T folks often omitted functionality not just because they were lazy or didn't get around to it (although, to be fair, there was some of that), but at least as often because they simply thought it was a bad idea. google for "cat -v considered harmful" for an example, coming right from the original Bell Lab that created Unix in the first place. having more features does not make something better. the GNU folks are notorious for adding functionality without giving much or any thought to how it integrates with the existing system.
      i'm also very interested in your claim that the GNU tools are more stable. cite?

      i'll give you the fact that SMIT is crap. it's impressively bad. but package management is hard in complex systems. apt is better, but it's got more than its fair share of issues, too. myself, i've become more and more convinced of the OS X method: just provide a mostly-self-contained bundle with good system frameworks. sure, it's less efficient in terms of disk use, but that's cheap.

      note, incidentally, that OS X uses comparatively little of the GNU userland, opting instead for BSD-derived ones in many cases of overlap. while the BSD folks are far from immune to creeping featuritus, they're at least somewhat more constrained by questions of aesthetics, thanks in large part to the prolonged exposure to the original Bell Labs folks.
      --

      i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
    6. Re:Low Hanging Fruit by Amigori · · Score: 1
      As with other replies, I disagree with shifting from the the ATT apps to GNU ones for the same reasons as mentioned in another post. And if you really want a specific GNU tool, just recompile it for AIX or grab it from the AIX Toolbox.

      I do agree with you about the crappy packing system, although I personally like FreeBSD's package system, but apt is nice too.

      The thing with the AIX, and *nixes in general, is that they run on big iron. Backend stuff that needs performance, reliability and predictability over eyecandy. Nobody uses AIX as their daily desktop system. Why muck it up with the glossy stuff that just eats CPU time?

      Amigori

      --
      "The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
  15. Re: Any Pointers? by Halvy · · Score: 0

    Yea, type in SCO in your favorite search engine... like everyone else does, or read the news.

    -- The InterNet is a terrible thing to waste. Arrest Bill Gates and shut down Microsoft immediately.

    --
    I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
  16. I'm impressed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seems like a heck of a lot of money to spend on developing Asterisk's replacement for SIP.

    That's what we're talking about...right?

    1. Re:I'm impressed. by njcoder · · Score: 1
      " Seems like a heck of a lot of money to spend on developing Asterisk's replacement for SIP"

      Your joke aside, the 200 million being spent isn't new money being spent on AIX. It's really just existing resources being pooled together under a new name. Just a marketting ploy. From the article:

      "While the figure represents existing salaries and equipment drawn together under one roof, it also represents some shift in emphasis by IBM from Linux back to its mature Unix operating system."
  17. Shift in emphasis? Doesn't seem like it. by cbreaker · · Score: 1

    "While the figure represents existing salaries and equipment drawn together under one roof, it also represents some shift in emphasis by IBM from Linux back to its mature Unix operating system."

    How do you figure that? If all it is is shifting the books around, I don't see how it's changing emphasis on anything. Sounds more like simply reorganizing in the name of effenciency.

    --
    - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
  18. Unix03 compliance by thanasakis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Take a look at the unix03 register. Only Solaris 10 and AIX are Unix03 compliant. That's why it makes perfect sense for IBM to continue its commitement to AIX (and for Sun to Solaris of course).

    Linux (I mean Linux in the broader sense, not just the kernel) should strive to achieve some sort of formal compatibility to a standard like that.

    1. Re:Unix03 compliance by bruthasj · · Score: 1

      Like COE certification?

      http://www.redhat.com/en_us/USA/home/company/news/ prarchive/2003/press_coe.html

      GNU/Linux adheres to standards where it benefits the community. Arbitrary formal standards are adhere to by corporate organizations mainly when dictated by marketing and not by engineering. Only in rare circumstances does a ragtag non-profit, free-software group form with a sole purpose to push a free operating system into standards adoption. Efforts thus far--at the level of unix03--have been very distro specific and driven by corps in it for the $$.

      Though, I'm certain you can create a domain and website to begin promoting the adoption of unix03 standard across all flavors of Linux. Good luck!

  19. Big deal! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Big deal! Yeah sure! This made the front page news??! Huh. So, some executive has decided that yeah we should do this. Is this revolutionary in any way? Fuck no.

  20. The lack of comments begs the question by Junky191 · · Score: 1

    What the hell is AIX? I've been in IT for 10 years now and never heard of it.

    1. Re:The lack of comments begs the question by saleenS281 · · Score: 1

      So what you're saying is you're a windows admin.

    2. Re:The lack of comments begs the question by anothy · · Score: 1

      that's pretty sad, and in all seriousness i'd take it as an indication that you should be looking around the industry a bit more, or significantly re-evaluating your knowledge

      AIX is IBM's Unix system, and has been a commercial offering for nearly twenty years (next year). it's got a very large installed base (as server OSs go), impressive enterprise-grade functionality, and enviable stability. it's also a very large part of the fuss around the SCO v. IBM lawsuit, perhaps the biggest legal issue in IT at the moment. check out AIX's Wikipedia page, which gives a much better overview of history and such than IBM's official AIX page.

      --

      i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
    3. Re:The lack of comments begs the question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What does all that have to do with Interspecies Tickling?

    4. Re:The lack of comments begs the question by telecomtom · · Score: 1

      you're kidding, right?

      --

      -- tt

  21. Yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    IBM was using Unix under a license issued by AT&T but currently administered by SCO. Autozone got sued because they switched to Linux. Daimler Chrysler got sued because they quit using their licensed Unix several years ago.

    That leaves Novell and Red Hat. Red Hat sued SCO. SCO sued Novell for slander of title. So, yes, the majority of people SCO sued were customers.

  22. I warned you by ClosedSource · · Score: 1

    "it also represents some shift in emphasis by IBM from Linux back to its mature Unix operating system."

    IBM will support OSS including Linux as long as the PR value exceeds any investment and not a second longer. Since they lost leadership of PC development, IBM has never met idea or consortium that they didn't like, but in the end their participation has little impact on the adoption of the technology involved.

  23. We're all making this a bit complicated by melonman · · Score: 1

    IBM is a huge company, the IT industry is less stable than for a long time, and they are putting their eggs in more than one basket because they can?

    --
    Virtually serving coffee
  24. Can't agree more by porkThreeWays · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Thank ya Jesus! I'm not the only one! I mean there is some REALLY basic shit that some of these commercial Unices don't have. Command history anyone? This is probably the biggest annoyance. Is it that fucking hard to make my shell support the "up" key? Is it also that fucking hard to support an "insert mode" rather than always replacing? Tab completion? It's like living in the damn stone age working on these boxes I swear. I work in a mixed environment and have to switch back and forth a lot. I can tell you, 90% of my typing mistakes are because of one of the issues mentioned above.

    One of our boxes is a dual 1ghz P3 SCO box w/ RAID 10 scsi disks. Sounds like it should have decent i/o, right? Fuck no. If you perform anything remotely disk intensive the box crawls to a snails pace. We have other open source operating systems on similiar hardware that never have this problem. The fucking thing loads more services on boot than an Open SuSe 10 full install with all services running at boot.

    I think this myth that commercial Unices are somehow better is largely bullshit. Solaris is an exception, and there are maybe 1 or 2 other notables. But for the most part, commercial Unices are garbage. I've worked with all the Unices listed on the Unix rosetta stone and then some, and I can honestly say a good chunk didn't even attempt to make a decent commercial Unix.

    I see so much retarded shit it'll make your head spin. /etc/route is a binary executable. STILL using sysadm. Super fucked up device names. root can log in on the first and second virtual terminals, but anything after that is off limits to root. more? MORE!?! more is the most archiac pager on the face of the earth. Keep it there for compatability, but give me "less" if I need it. The original vi? lmao. The original vi was written 30 years ago with the intention of programming over extremely slow network connections. There is no reason not to include a vi clone or nano. Cups is miles ahead of the bullshit printing systems I see on a daily basis. For many of them, we have a choice of like 10 HP laserjet printers and that's it. Some of these backup systems... I'd be better off with tar and gzip some are so awful. It's 2005 and you don't support network backups? Telnet? TELNET?! You're telling me to remotely adminstrate this box I've got to use telnet!? And is it that fuckin hard to give me a -h option for human readable output? I have more important things to do with my day than squint at a screen and count how many numbers long 22349873463 is.

    --
    If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
  25. Unix is not dead... *SCO*'s flavor is dead by HighOrbit · · Score: 1

    SCO's unix biz was terminally ill long before they started suing people (although that didn't help) The law suits were simply an act of desparation. SCO is dead because their product lacked all the high-end features found in most of the big 64-bit unix flavors like Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX. SCO was living in the the low-end 32-bit intel area of the Unix neighborhood and they just couldn't compete with Linux there and 64-bit Solaris/AIX RISC on the high end. BTW... I heard that SCO's biggest customer (McDonalds) was switching to WinXP for their point-of-sale equipment. Probably the last nail in the coffin.