Qantas Ditches Linux for AIX

An anonymous reader writes "Australia's No. 1 airline Qantas will shift their underlying platform running its internal finance systems from Linux to IBM's AIX next month as part of a wide-ranging technology transformation project. 'We're moving from a Linux platform to an IBM AIX environment — we did that to address some stability issues we were having', said Suzanne Young, Qantas group general manager for finance improvement and segmentation. The decision was made last year, as part of the planning for the rollout."

Comments

Re:obsolete?

[Arker]

AIX is really old, mature, and definitely still maintained. It's a very good system.

I expect it will eventually be retired and replaced with Linux, but that's still years down the road. Right now, it offers some advantages, particularly on minicomputer class hardware.

IBM business plan at work

[ntufar]

It is a good example showing why IBM supports Linux:

1. Hook up customers on a cheaply solution based on Linux and MySQL.
2. As customer's data and number of clients grow they will start experiencing scalability problems.
3. Propose much more scalable, reliable, dependable (and much more expensive) solution on AIX, AS/400, Mainframe.
4. Profit!

Re:IBM business plan at work

[snero3]

You are not too far from the truth there.

We started our relationshop with IBM on their intel and Linux X series servers and as we grew they moved us to P series servers running AIX which happens to run all linux binaries just fine and even has the same command set.

The "Upgrade" path was easy and plainless and the cost was spread out over years so it kept management and the accountants happy.

Personally I see it as a winning solution for both Linux and IBM.

Re:obsolete?

[TheMidnight]

AIX is hardly obsolete. Over half of our clients with large server systems use IBM hardware and AIX. IBM hardware tends to be cheaper than other vendors, and AIX itself is a very stable operating system and easy to configure and maintain via SMIT. There are many advantages to AIX: cheaper hardware, powerful POWER5 architecture to run on (IBM hardware scales quite nicely), decent support, and it is maintained by one of the oldest technology companies in America. Compared to Solaris and HP-UX, it's one of the best UNIX flavors out there, and doesn't have the stability problems seen with Linux. Linux is stable, but still quirky.

IBM still maintains AIX. It's not reaching end of support like Tru64 or OpenVMS, and with POWER6 and POWER7 coming in the future, will likely enjoy a long, long support future.

Re:well

[Iron Condor]

If there system was unstable it was probably their system design and not the OS.

Exactly - and that's why it makes sense for them to switch to something like AIX that actually has a "system design". Which Linux doesn't. Linux is just an OS. Any one PC may or may not work with Linux. And may or may not stop working tomorrow for any of a thousand reasons.

When an hour of downtime costs you real money, it suddenly becomes a worthwhile thing to have someone who's contractually obliged to fix your system when it breaks. Posting a bug report at freshmeat doesn't quite cut it when you have planes grounded...

Re:well

[zurtle]

Agreed x2.

companies need that stability to run. I went for a job interview in Oz for a company that processes sugar cane (CRS). When they're crushing the cane to get the sugary goodness out of it, they're running several plants 24/7 for several months. Furthermore these plants are spread over about 1000 km as the crow flies (indeed they use a plane to get between plants in emergencies). In their quest for stability, they use C and Fortran ("What?" I hear some of you young critters say) on VAX to run their automated weighing machines.

No fancy .Net or even [relatively-mature] VB6 for them (the guy who interviewed me had a severe dislike for Microsoft - they tried them and got burned once). They wanted something that worked like a piston and never stopped.

Good on Qantas. Their in-flight meals aren't too bad either (I flew over from New Zealand - the country that sells Dells in shops).

The technical term...

[nixkuroi]

Would that be called "Expenguination" ?

Re:obsolete?

[trewornan]

A great example of why it makes sense to avoid using MS operating systems - if you have problems with Linux you can move over to AIX without too much difficulty. If you're having problems with AIX move your apps to BSD. Problems with BSD try Solaris.

Having problems with Windows . . . you're fscked!

And so it starts

[Builder]

10 years ago, I jumped onto the Linux bandwagon. Last year, I started brushing up my Solaris skills and I'm now working to add some Sun certs to my RHCE.

Linux just is NOT ready for the enterprise. Red Hat, the 'biggest' Linux company out there just hasn't learnt to run with the big dogs yet.

Technical issues about the OS aside, Red Hat just don't present as a professional company. After dealing with Sun and MS for years, dealing with RH is a bit of a joke. £300k doesn't even buy you any media! A visit to their head office in North Carolina sees the presentation done from a projector on a desk, with bits of cardboard to stop it wobbling. Trial versions of the software to keep your skills up to date ? Don't be silly - you have to use CentOS for the free tools and you're SOL for their closed source tools like Satellite or RHN Proxy.

Once you go from there to the support issues, RH take an even bigger beating. 'Just reboot it' is NOT the first (and for 3 hours, only) option I want to hear when I have a production server locked up. And 3 hours to escalate to second line is NOT good enough for a platinum contract (Premium in RH terms?). If I wanted that kind of solution and support, I'd go back to sending my cheques to Redmond.

At a technical level, Linux is NOT keeping up and is barely fit for datacentre purposes. Only recently has the LVM stuff got to a useful level where we can do multipathing (with IO on both paths) without needing third party software. It's not great yet, and the tools to maintain it are badly documented, but since we just can't get Veritas for 64bit RHEL4 (or couldn't when I checked a few months back), it's the only choice we have.

The constant changes to the API and ABI are a total PITA for ISVs. You can either go with RHEL / SLES (or CentOS if you're broke like me :)) and forsake many useful updates and features in tools like Samba and then you'll get your stable API / ABI. Or you can go with a bleeding edge distro and never have ISV support for your products. Neither of these is a great choice for us, we'd like something in the middle, but I can't find a commercial vendor providing this today.

Lastly, the tools. I'd really rather not get started on the issues with the tools that RH provides to manage systems. Suffice to say, not being able to do LVM setup using the text installer came as a bit of a shock. And when confronting RH on the severe deficiencies in their text-based admin tools, I was just told to spend 8k on a closed source RH product to resolve these... How much MORE like MS can you be? Yeah, we know the base product is a bit broken, but that part isn't really our focus - here, try this expensive fix.
Documentation is in a similar state with some stuff being very well documented and other stuff, poorly if at all.

In the end, Sun still have a better understanding of what the enterprise needs, both from a support and an OS point of view.

Freedom of choice with Windows

[DrYak]

NO ! You're spreading kommunist FUD !!!
There's freedom of choice with Microsoft

Having problems with Windows . . . you're fscked!

If you have problems with Windows XP, you can move over to Windows Vista.

And as an added bonus, then you'll realise that things that much fscked up under Windows XP in comparison, and you'll happily move back to XP.

Re:Linux problems

[orangesquid]

Actually, I would say the analogy would be more accurate if done this way:
Windows-user patient visiting Windows-OS doctor:
Doctor: Welcome to My Visit. Please note: all information contained in this visit is proprietary medical information. Am I a real doctor? Would you like to call the ADA and ensure my license is Genuine?
Patient: Uh, that's okay. I'd rather just get on to what's wrong.
Doctor: Okay. Say "Start" to begin!
Patient: ... Start? ... Doctor, something feels wrong. I think my wrist is broken.
Doctor: What's that, you say? Your breath is rotten? Here's a prescription for breathmints. Is that what you needed?
Patient: No, not my breath, I said my wrist. Could you take a look at it?
[ Doctor shines light in Patient's ears. ]
Doctor: Your problem appears to be a herniated disc, but because you have red hair, I am unable to offer any treatment. Would you like me to submit a report about your hair color to the publisher of my medical texts?
Patient: Uh, no thanks.
[ Doctor runs quickly out of the room. ]

Linux-user patient visiting Linux-distribution doctor:
Doctor, skimming a textbook: This is Gray's Anatomy, 23rd Edition. Reading skeletal charts... done. Reading cardiovascular charts... done. Reading male groin chart... done. Reading female groin chart... WARNING: PATIENT DOES NOT HAVE FEMALE OPTIONS INSTALLED---CONTINUING ANYWAY. Reading blood pressure chart... rescaling... done. WARNING: YOUR LOCALE IS SET TO "IMPERIAL UNITS". METRIC UNITS WILL BE THE ONLY TYPE SUPPORTED IN THE 40TH EDITION! Done.
[ Doctor stares blankly at patient. ]
Patient: ... Um, something is wrong with my wrist.
Doctor: Ok.
Patient: ... Could you take an X-ray or something?
Doctor: What primary focus depth for the X-ray?
Patient: What do you mean?
[ Doctor hands patient a book on X-rays. Patient skims through for a few minutes. ]
Patient: Oh, aim for about 2cm penetration for my wrist.
[ Doctor X-rays wrist. ]
Doctor: Your X-ray has been placed in the hospital's default location. Consult with the front desk staff to change where your X-rays are stored.
Patient: Can you tell me what's wrong?
Doctor: I don't understand.
Patient: Please examine my X-ray for problems.
Doctor: Which X-ray?
Patient: ... uh, the one in the hospital's default location.
[ Doctor examines X-ray, which takes a mere fraction of a second. ]
Doctor: Ulna and Radius are properly spaced. All ligaments are intact. Capitate is cropped at the edge of the slide. Pisiform is intact. Triquetrum is intact. GRAYS_SCAPHOID_CHECK: STUB! Continuing. NOTICE: Lunate is not intact.
Patient: Does that mean I need surgery?
Doctor: Please see "Lunate HOWTO."
[ Doctor hands patient a file of papers. Patient reads through them. ]
Patient: Uhh, I think I just need a cast for two months, from what I can make of this. I guess I also need to schedule for a follow-up when it's time to remove it.
Doctor: What color would you like your cast to be? What day of the week two months from now?
Patient: White is fine. And, a Monday, preferably in the morning.
Doctor: "White" is ambiguous. Say "fine" again to get a list of possibilities. We have appointments beginning at 1300-hours Universal Coordinated Time.
Patient: Just use the first kind of "white" you have, I don't care. Umm, that would be starting at 9AM Eastern/daylight, right?
Doctor: "White, beige-white" chosen. Yes, that is 1300-hours Universal Coordinated Time.
Patient: Okay. Schedule me for 1300 then.
Doctor: Okay. Scheduled.
[ Doctor applies cast to patient. ]
Patient: Thanks. Do I pay here, or out front?
Doctor: Payment is optional. All our services are essentially free-as-in-beer but funded by contributions. More importantly, though, all of our medical treatment is free-as-in-speech. This means that you are allowed to discuss your treatment with whomever you like or take not