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24 August 2011
Are you moving away from Oracle or Sun Microsystems equipment to IBM System p
servers? Are you more familiar with zones and LDOMs than HMCs and VIO servers? This
article provides practical tips for migrating from Solaris to IBM AIX servers.
Most flavors of UNIX and Linux on the market today are similar enough that even a novice
systems administrator can navigate the various operating systems with ease. But when you need
to switch from one operating system to anotherbe it because of a change in business direction,
technology enhancements, or cost savingsmaking the switch can be tough.
This article looks at practical migration information for switching from the Oracle (formerly Sun
Microsystems) Solaris operating system and associated hardware to the IBM System p platform
with the IBM AIX operating system. It covers key information that administrators should know
about what differentiates the two systems and shows how you can start running quickly.
Systems management
The most basic thing a Solaris administrator should know about managing System p hardware
is how to access the servers and get things running. In the Solaris world, you do this through the
Advanced Lights Out Manager, Remote System Control, or other forms of console access; for
most AIX systems, you use the Hardware Management Console (HMC).
Copyright IBM Corporation 2011
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The HMC is a multifunction stand-alone system that can interact with multiple System p computers
simultaneously. It communicates with the servers' firmware through a special area called the
hypervisor, which manages the servers' resources. Using the HMC, you can allot CPU, memory,
disk, and other hardware resources to individual LPARs, which serve as virtual AIX servers within
the host System p hardware. In addition, resources can be shared or micro-partitioned among
multiple LPARs.
The HMC is accessible either directly in the console or by configuring remote connectivity, which
allows login functionality by directing a web browser to a secured page available on the HMC.
Begin setting up your system by creating a spreadsheet with the location of your Fibre Channel
and network cards on a per-drawer basis. Cables can get plugged into the wrong places easily and
logging in at the HMC won't show the drawer or rack elevations, so the spreadsheet is invaluable.
To set up your spreadsheet, complete these steps:
1. Log in to the HMC as hscroot.
The default password, if you've never logged in before, is abc1234.
2. In the left column, expand the Systems Management view and then the Servers menu. Click
the managed server you need to examine.
3. Click the Properties menu.
4. On the I/O tab, record a list of all of the cards by drawer and physically compare them to the
server, noting at what elevations the particular drawers are located.
Low-level management
One of the first tasks a Solaris systems administrator learns is to access the open boot PROM
also known as the OK prompt. This low-level area of the hardware allows you to reset a hung
system, boot from a specific device (like a CD or a network boot), or get into single-user mode.
Although there is no direct equivalent on System p hardware, there is a similar low-level interface
known as System Management Services (SMS).
SMS is a numerically driven menu system that allows you to set the boot list order (that is, CD,
hard disk, network), set the boot IP address in the Remote Initial Program Load subsection for
a Network Installation Manager build-out (similar to Solaris Jumpstart), or perform lower-level
diagnostic work.
You access this menu by pressing the F1 or 1 key when you power on a System p computer or
LPAR. Alternatively, an LPAR can boot directly into the SMS menu by changing the Boot Option
sub-menu through the HMC when activating the LPAR.
If you are in the SMS and going to boot from a disk but have multiple hard drives mapped from
a SAN across a number of adapters, the SMS can take significant time to probe all the hardware
addresses. To boot from a hard drive quickly, perform these steps:
1. If applicable for a SAN-boot architecture, have your SAN administrator map only the root disk
to the server. Or, pick a unique size for the rootvg disk so that it will stand out from the rest
easily.
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2. Boot the system into the SMS, and open a terminal window (if applicable).
3. Click Select Boot Options, then click Select Install/Boot Device.
4. Click Hard Drive and navigate to the type of disk desired, or click List all devices.
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6. Press F10 to exit SMIT, and set the user's password by running passwd $USER.
Device control
One other virtue about AIX is its ability to detect and manage devices easily. With Solaris,
determining which device correlates to something like /ssm@0,0/pci@1c,700000/pci@1/
SUNW,isptwo@4 (scsi) is sometimes complicated. Or, if you have the wrong set of device drivers
installed, running devfsadm might not configure that Fibre Channel adapter you're trying to set up.
In AIX, the cfgmgr command detects any hardware devices present on the system and even tells
you which device drivers may be missing. A common set of commands, such as lsdev, lscfg,
and lsattr, provide information on the devices installed in plain English, their base configuration
information, and any attributes or tunables set for the devices. Devices can be presented in one of
two statesavailable or defineddenoting whether the device can be used. All of this information
is tracked in the ODM, where it persists across reboots and can be ported easily.
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File systems
I was thrown off when I first started learning Solaris and heard that out of the box, I could make a
maximum of seven file systems (slices) per disk and that once those file systems were carved up,
their sizes were pretty well fixed. AIX is much more versatile, in part because of how its Logical
Volume Manager (LVM) works.
Figure 1 shows a series of disks with small cylinders. One cylinder, labeled Physical Volume, has
a grid drawn on it to represent the individual physical partitions (PPs) on it. Above the physical
volume (PV), three other cylinders are grouped by an ellipse showing how they together represent
a volume group (VG). A rectangle running across the three disks shows a logical volume (LV)
placed across the three disks.
In AIX, disksknown as PVsare divided into smaller homogeneous blocks of storage called
physical partitions. These PVs are gathered logically into VGs; within VGs, LVs are laid down
across sets of PPs to build structure onto the PVs. If there is disk mirroring, they may be mapped
to one LPs that points to two or more PPs. Then, a JFS or an Enhanced JFS (JFS2) is established
on the LV, tracked with the /etc/filesystems file automatically, and ready for use. Once they are
mounted, they can be dynamically grown, shrunk, or modified, and adding more space to the VG
is as simple as adding another PV. This is similar to how Veritas Volume Manager can provide disk
management tools but comes integrated with the AIX operating system at no extra charge.
Although Solaris does let you customize your file system layout, even going as far as having
one root file system to contain everything, AIX comes with several default file systems for more
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granularity: /, /usr, /var, /tmp, /home, /opt, and /admin. However, in AIX, the /tmp file system is not
the same thing as swap or virtual memory. Instead, such memory is managed by paging space,
which resides on one or more independent LVs.
Services management
With the advent of the most recent version of the operating system, Solaris 10 took a page from
the play book of how other operating systems like Linux manage services and created the Service
Management Facility. Using commands like svcs and svcadm, this concept was brought in to
handle things like inetd and NFS with simple start-and-stop directives.
AIX uses the System Resource Controller (SRC) to accomplish the same goals. This daemon,
srcmstr, which gets kicked off by the /etc/inittab file at boot time, controls various services by
breaking them into groups, subsystems, and sub-servers. For example, the tcpip group contains
the inetd subsystem, which manages the Telnet sub-server.
Figure 2 depicts a series of concentric circles illustrating the hierarchy of srcsmstr groups,
subsystems, and sub-servers. The largest circle is labeled with the encompassing srcmstr
process. Under that, as an example, is the tcpip group. Within that is a circle labeled subservers,
which has some of the various tcpip sub-servers, such as snmpd and named. Finally, the
innermost circle has subsystems of inetd, including Telnet, FTP, and RSH.
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These individual groups can be found in configuration files in /etc, typically with an rc. prefix, with
a corresponding entry in the inittab or something called from the inittab, such as /etc/rc.tcpip,
managing those services just described.
However, since AIX 5.1 came out, it is also possible to start and stop some services and
applications similar to the System V model used in prior versions of Solaris. The /etc/rc.d directory
structure can be used to put in S and K files at the various run levels listed to bring up or down
processes. But AIX does not adhere quite as strictly to the run level model as Solaris or Linux, so it
is important to place any custom start and stop scripts in the right places.
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Similar to zones, IBM introduced WPARs in AIX 6.1, which allow for the creation of mini-servers
that run under the auspices of a larger system. But these WPARs can also be configured to
traverse multiple AIX servers across System p hardware instead of being stuck on one piece of
equipment.
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Conclusion
Although picking up another operating system takes time to learn all its nuances and particulars,
this article provide background to put Solaris administrators more at ease when migrating to AIX
servers. You should now have the base-level foundation to help you understand the key concepts
and main differences between the two operating systems.
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Resources
Learn
Read more about the HMC in the Hardware Management Console V7 Handbook.
If you're an RHEL 4 administrator, you will find the developerWorks article, AIX tips for
RHEL4 administrators (Christian Pruett, November 2009), helpful.
Find helpful VIO tips and tricks in the developerWorks article, The VIO cheat sheet (Christian
Pruett, July 2010).
Check out the UNIX Rosetta Stone.
AIX and UNIX developerWorks zone: The AIX and UNIX zone provides a wealth of
information relating to all aspects of AIX systems administration and expanding your UNIX
skills.
New to AIX and UNIX? Visit the New to AIX and UNIX page to learn more.
Technology bookstore: Browse the technology bookstore for books on this and other
technical topics.
Get products and technologies
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product in a sandbox environment, or access it through the cloud. Choose from over 100 IBM
product trials.
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