AIX

Official IBM AIX training on Power servers

AIX is IBM UNIX for Power servers. Anyone arriving from Linux meets things with no direct equivalent: device configuration lives in the ODM rather than in text files, administration goes through SMIT, installs and fixes are distributed with NIM, and processor and memory allocation is decided by the hypervisor, not by the operating system.

Which release applies, and until when

AIX 7.3 is the current branch and runs on POWER8, POWER9, Power10 and Power11. The detail most often missed: support runs by Technology Level rather than by version number. TL2 stops receiving fixes on 30 November 2026, TL3 on 31 December 2027 and TL4 on 31 December 2028. If you are still on AIX 7.2, IBM requires TL5.

Every course is delivered on the level you have installed, and the labs are built with that release in front of you.

Our own Ansible workshop for IBM Power

This one does not come from the IBM catalogue: we wrote it. Ansible automation workshop for IBM Power teaches you to run AIX, Linux, VIOS and IBM i machines with Ansible from a single point, instead of logging into each one. It is what a team asks for once the estate has grown and repeated tasks eat the working day.

The ideal path

For someone taking charge of an AIX from scratch, the order that works best is: essentials for the floor of the system, jumpstart for full administration, storage and SAN because the disks nearly always come from an array, and performance once there is something in production to watch. Fourteen days spread over a few months, not back to back.

If you already administer another UNIX or Linux, skip the first one and come in through the jumpstart.

Or, by level

Beginner. AIX essentials: files, permissions, shell and processes. The only one that assumes nothing.

Intermediate. The jumpstart for full administration; storage and SAN if the disks come from an array; NIM if several machines have to be installed and patched from one place; and Korn and Bash, because the inherited scripts have to be readable by somebody.

Expert. Performance when the basics no longer explain the slowness; security when root has to be split into roles and file systems encrypted; Live Update when there is no maintenance window; and Ansible automation and the open source tools for everything written from now on.

Starting and administering

Infrastructure

Automation and development

Performance and security

How they are delivered

We are an IBM Business Partner: the material and labs are the official ones and our own engineers teach them, IBM Champions among them. At your premises or remotely with a live instructor.

Tell us your Technology Level and where your team is coming from — another UNIX, Linux, or nothing at all — and we will propose the order and say what can be run in the same week.