[Info-vax] IT shops call on HP and Oracle to kiss and make up

[Michael Kraemer]

Kenneth Fairfield schrieb:

> 
> Well the p-Series run AIX, the i-Series run the mainframe OS's. 
 > But the hardware is essentially the same, near as I can tell (point 
on firmware noted).

The current lineup of Power Systems can run AIX, Linux (Red Hat),
and "IBM i" (formerly OS/400) equally well. I'm not aware
you'd need extra firmware (definitely not for AIX and Linux).
At least in the past, however, "i" often was the step child
as far as support of some hardware features was concerned.
And, btw, "i" qualifies more as a midrange than a mainframe system.

> BTW, AIX is a really "unusual" unix, at least in my view. :-)

Those who grow up with it are spoiled for any "usual" Unix :-)

> While you have the usual shells available, and can lay down most of the usual Gnu utilities, etc., 
> configuring storage, adding users, and other sysadmin sort of things is done through IBM utilities 
 > (vgroups, vdisks, hdisks, and the like,
 > an "lsxxxx" utility for every imaginable listing you'd want,
 > "smitty" for most management tasks, "lpars" to partition the "frame" 
into individual systems, etc.).

These goodies indeed save a poor admin a lot of time and effort.