IBM AIX
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AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive, pronounced /ˌeɪ.aɪ.ˈɛks/ ay-eye-EKS[5]) is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM for several of its computer platforms.
Background
Originally released for the
AIX is based on
AIX was the first operating system to have a journaling file system, and IBM has continuously enhanced the software with features such as processor, disk and network virtualization, dynamic hardware resource allocation (including fractional processor units), and reliability engineering ported from its mainframe designs.[8]
History
Unix started life at AT&T's Bell Labs research center in the early 1970s, running on DEC minicomputers. By 1976, the operating system was in use at various academic institutions, including Princeton, where Tom Lyon and others ported it to the S/370, to run as a guest OS under VM/370.[9] This port would later grow out to become UTS,[10] a mainframe Unix offering by IBM's competitor Amdahl Corporation.[11] IBM's own involvement in Unix can be dated to 1979, when it assisted Bell Labs in doing its own Unix port to the 370 (to be used as a
It took until 1984 for IBM to offer its own Unix on the S/370 platform, VM/IX, which was developed by
AIX Version 1, introduced in 1986 for the
Among other variants, IBM later produced AIX Version 2 (also known as AIX/6000), based on AIX Version 1, for their POWER-based RS/6000 platform. Since 1990, AIX has served as the primary operating system for the RS/6000 series (later renamed IBM eServer pSeries, then IBM System p, and now IBM Power Systems).
AIX Version 3, introduced in 1988, for the PS/2 and VM/370 systems, developed by Locus Computing Corporation, added the Transparent Computing Facility. [15] AIX Version 4, introduced in 1994, added symmetric multiprocessing with the introduction of the first RS/6000 SMP servers and continued to evolve through the 1990s, culminating with AIX 4.3.3 in 1999. Version 4.1, in a slightly modified form, was also the standard operating system for the Apple Network Server systems sold by Apple Computer to complement the Macintosh line.
In the late 1990s, under
AIX was a component of the 2003
AIX 6 was announced in May 2007, and it ran as an open beta from June 2007 until the general availability (GA) of AIX 6.1 on November 9, 2007. Major new features in AIX 6.1 included full
AIX 7.1 was announced in April 2010, and an open beta ran until general availability of AIX 7.1 in September 2010. Several new features, including better scalability, enhanced clustering and management capabilities were added. AIX 7.1 includes a new built-in clustering capability called Cluster Aware AIX. AIX is able to organize multiple LPARs through the multipath communications channel to neighboring CPUs, enabling very high-speed communication between processors. This enables multi-terabyte memory address range and page table access to support global petabyte shared memory space for AIX POWER7 clusters so that software developers can program a cluster as if it were a single system, without using message passing (i.e. semaphore-controlled Inter-process Communication). AIX administrators can use this new capability to cluster a pool of AIX nodes. By default, AIX V7.1 pins kernel memory and includes support to allow applications to pin their kernel stack. Pinning kernel memory and the kernel stack for applications with real-time requirements can provide performance improvements by ensuring that the kernel memory and kernel stack for an application is not paged out.[18]
AIX 7.2[19] was announced in October 2015, and released in December 2015. The principal feature of AIX 7.2 is the Live Kernel Update capability, which allows OS fixes to replace the entire AIX kernel with no impact to applications, by live migrating workloads to a temporary surrogate AIX OS partition while the original OS partition is patched. AIX 7.2 was also restructured to remove obsolete components. The networking component, bos.net.tcp.client was repackaged to allow additional installation flexibility. Unlike AIX 7.1, AIX 7.2 is only supported on systems based on POWER7 or later processors.
In January 2023, IBM moved development of AIX to its Indian subsidiary.[20]
Supported hardware platforms
IBM RT PC
The original AIX (sometimes called AIX/RT) was developed for the IBM RT PC workstation by IBM in conjunction with
One of the novel aspects of the RT design was the use of a
Much of the AIX v2 kernel was written in the
were available.IBM PS/2 series
AIX PS/2 (also known as AIX/386) was developed by
The product was announced in September 1988 with a baseline tag price of $595, although some utilities like
The last version of PS/2 AIX is 1.3. It was released in 1992 and announced to add support for non-IBM (non-microchannel) computers as well.[27] Support for PS/2 AIX ended in March 1995.[28]
IBM mainframes
In 1988, IBM announced AIX/370, through z/VM.
IA-64 systems
As part of
Apple Network Servers
The Apple Network Server (ANS) systems were PowerPC-based systems designed by Apple Computer to have numerous high-end features that standard Apple hardware did not have, including swappable hard drives, redundant power supplies, and external monitoring capability. These systems were more or less based on the Power Macintosh hardware available at the time but were designed to use AIX (versions 4.1.4 or 4.1.5) as their native operating system in a specialized version specific to the ANS called AIX for Apple Network Servers.
AIX was only compatible with the Network Servers and was not ported to standard Power Macintosh hardware. It should not be confused with A/UX, Apple's earlier version of Unix for 68k-based Macintoshes.
POWER ISA/PowerPC/Power ISA-based systems
The release of AIX version 3 (sometimes called AIX/6000) coincided with the announcement of the first POWER1-based IBM RS/6000 models in 1990.
AIX v3 innovated in several ways on the software side. It was the first operating system to introduce the idea of a
Other notable subsystems included:
- IRIS GL, a 3D rendering library, the progenitor of OpenGL. IRIS GL was licensed by IBM from SGI in 1987, then still a fairly small company, which had sold only a few thousand machines at the time. SGI also provided the low-end graphics card for the RS/6000, capable of drawing 20,000 gouraud-shaded triangles per second. The high-end graphics card was designed by IBM, a follow-on to the mainframe-attached IBM 5080, capable of rendering 990,000 vectors per second.
- 3D rendering API, popular in automotive CAD/CAM circles, and at the core of CATIA.
- Full implementation of version 11 of the X Window System, together with Motif as the recommended widget toolkit and window manager.
- Network file systems: .
- NCS, the Network Computing System, licensed from Apollo Computer (later acquired by HP).
- DPS on-screen display system. This was notable as a "plan B" in case the X11+Motif combination failed in the marketplace. However, it was highly proprietary, supported only by Sun, NeXT, and IBM. This cemented its failure in the marketplace in the face of the open systems challenge of X11+Motif and its lack of 3D capability.
In addition, AIX applications can run in the PASE subsystem under IBM i.
Source code
IBM formerly made the AIX for RS/6000 source code available to customers for an additional fee; in 1991, IBM customers could order the AIX 3.0 source code for a one-time charge of US$60,000;[33] subsequently, IBM released the AIX 3.1 source code in 1992,[34] and AIX 3.2 in 1993.[35] These source code distributions excluded certain files (authored by third-parties) which IBM did not have rights to redistribute, and also excluded layered products such as the MS-DOS emulator and the C compiler. Furthermore, in order to be able to license the AIX source code, the customer first had to procure source code license agreements with AT&T and the University of California, Berkeley.[33]
Versions
POWER/PowerPC/Power ISA releases
Version | Release date | End of support date |
---|---|---|
5L 5.1 | May 4, 2001[36] | April 1, 2006[36] |
5L 5.2 | October 18, 2002[36] | April 30, 2009[36] |
5L 5.3 | August 13, 2004[36] | April 30, 2012[36] |
6.1 | November 9, 2007[37] | April 30, 2017[38] |
7.1 | September 10, 2010[39] | April 30, 2023[40] |
7.2 | December 4, 2015[41] | TBA |
7.3 | December 10, 2021[42] | TBA |
Legend: Old version Older version, still maintained Latest version |
- AIX V7.3, December 10, 2021[43]
- Requires POWER8 or newer CPUs
- AIX V7.2, October 5, 2015[19]
- Live update for Interim Fixes, Service Packs and Technology Levels – replaces the entire AIX kernel without impacting applications
- Flash based filesystem caching
- Cluster Aware AIX automation with repository replacement mechanism
- SRIOV-backed VNIC, or dedicated VNIC virtualized network adapter support
- RDSv3 over RoCE adds support of the Oracle RDSv3 protocol over the Mellanox Connect RoCE adapters
- Supports secure boot on POWER9 systems.[44]
- Requires POWER7 or newer CPUs
- AIX V7.1, September 10, 2010[45]
- Support for 256 cores / 1024 threads in a single LPAR
- The ability to run AIX V5.2 or V5.3 inside of a Workload Partition
- An XML profile based system configuration management utility
- Support for export of Fibre Channel adapters to WPARs
- VIOS disk support in a WPAR
- Cluster Aware AIX
- AIX Event infrastructure
- Role-based access control (RBAC) with domain support for multi-tenant environments
- Requires POWER4 or newer CPUs
- AIX V6.1, November 9, 2007[37]
- operating system-level virtualization
- Live Application Mobility
- Live Partition Mobility
- Security
- Role Based Access Control RBAC
- AIX Security Expert – a system and network security hardening tool
- Encrypting JFS2filesystem
- Trusted AIX
- Trusted Execution
- Role Based Access Control
- Integrated Electronic Service Agent for auto error reporting
- Concurrent Kernel Maintenance
- Kernel exploitation of POWER6 storage keys
- ProbeVue dynamic tracing
- Systems Director Console for AIX
- Integrated filesystem snapshot
- Requires POWER4 or newer CPUs
- AIX 6 withdrawn from Marketing effective April 2016 and from Support effective April 2017[38]
- AIX 5L 5.3,[46] August 13, 2004,[36] end of support April 30, 2012[36]
- NFSVersion 4
- Advanced Accounting
- Virtual SCSI
- Virtual Ethernet
- Exploitation of Simultaneous multithreading (SMT)
- Micro-Partitioning enablement
- POWER5 exploitation
- JFS2quotas
- Ability to shrink a JFS2filesystem
- Kernel scheduler has been enhanced to dynamically increase and decrease the use of virtual processors.
- AIX 5L 5.2,[47] October 18, 2002,[36] end of support April 30, 2009[36]
- Ability to run on the IBM BladeCenter JS20 with the PowerPC 970
- Minimum level required for POWER5 hardware
- MPIO for Fibre Channel disks
- iSCSI Initiator software
- Participation in Dynamic LPAR
- JFS2 released in Maintenance Level 01 in May 2003[48]
- Ability to run on the IBM
- AIX 5L 5.1,[49] May 4, 2001,[36] end of support April 1, 2006[36]
- Ability to run on an IA-64 architecture processor, although this never went beyond beta.[50]
- Minimum level required for POWER4 hardware and the last release that worked on the Micro Channel architecture
- 64-bit kernel, installed but not activated by default
- JFS2
- Ability to run in a Logical Partition on POWER4
- The L stands for Linux affinity
- Trusted Computing Base(TCB)
- Support for mirroring with striping
- AIX 4.3.3, September 17, 1999
- Online backup function
- Workload Manager (WLM)
- Introduction of topas utility
- AIX 4.3.2, October 23, 1998
- AIX 4.3.1, April 24, 1998
- First TCSEC security evaluation, completed December 18, 1998[51]
- AIX 4.3, October 31, 1997
- Ability to run on 64-bit architectureCPUs
- IPv6
- Web-based System Manager
- Ability to run on 64-bit
- AIX 4.2.1, April 25, 1997
- NFSVersion 3
- Y2K-compliant
- AIX 4.2, May 17, 1996
- AIX 4.1.5, November 8, 1996
- AIX 4.1.4, October 20, 1995
- AIX 4.1.3, July 7, 1995
- CDE 1.0 became the default GUI environment, replacing the AIXwindows Desktop.
- AIX 4.1.1, October 28, 1994
- AIX 4.1, August 12, 1994
- AIX Ultimedia Services introduced (multimedia drivers and applications)
- AIX 4.0, 1994
- AIX 3.2.5, October 15, 1993
- AIX 3.2 1992
- AIX 3.1, (General Availability) February 1990
- Journaled File System (JFS) filesystem type
- AIXwindows Desktop (based on X.desktop from IXI Limited)
- Journaled File System (
- AIX 3.0 1989 (Early Access)
- LVM (Logical Volume Manager) was incorporated into OSF/1, and in 1995 for HP-UX,[52] and the Linux LVM implementation is similar to the HP-UX LVM implementation.[53]
- SMITwas introduced.
IBM System/370 releases
- AIX/ESA Version 2 Release 2[54]
- Announced December 15, 1992
- Available February 26, 1993
- Withdrawn Jun 19, 1993
- Runs only in S/370-ESA mode
- AIX/ESA Version 2 Release 1[30]
- Announced March 31, 1992
- Available June 26, 1992
- Withdrawn Jun 19, 1993
- Runs only in S/370-ESA mode
- AIX/370 Version 1 Release 2.1[55]
- Announced February 5, 1991
- Available February February 22, 1991
- Withdrawn December 31, 1992
- Does not run in XA, ESA or z mode
- AIX/370 Version 1 Release 1[29]
- Announced March 15, 1988
- Available February 16, 1989
- Does not run in XA, ESA or z mode
IBM PS/2 releases
- AIX PS/2 v1.3, October 1992
- Withdrawn from sale in US, March 1995
- Patches supporting IBM ThinkPad 750C family of notebook computers, 1994
- Patches supporting non PS/2 hardware and systems, 1993
- AIX PS/2 v1.2.1, May 1991
- AIX PS/2 v1.2, March 1990
- AIX PS/2 v1.1, March 1989
IBM RT releases
- AIX RT v2.2.1, March 1991
- AIX RT v2.2, March 1990
- AIX RT v2.1, March 1989
- X-Windows included on installation media
- AIX RT v1.1, 1986
- AIX RT v1.0, 1985
User interfaces
The default shell was
Graphical
The
System Management Interface Tool
smit
. Experienced system administrators make use of the F6
function key which generates the command line that SMIT will invoke to complete it.
SMIT also generates a log of commands that are performed in the smit.script
file. The smit.script
file automatically records the commands with the command flags and parameters used. The smit.script
file can be used as an executable shell script to rerun system configuration tasks. SMIT also creates the smit.log
file, which contains additional detailed information that can be used by programmers in extending the SMIT system.
smit
and smitty
refer to the same program, though smitty
invokes the text-based version, while smit
will invoke an X Window System based interface if possible; however, if smit
determines that X Window System capabilities are not present, it will present the text-based version instead of failing. Determination of X Window System capabilities is typically performed by checking for the existence of the DISPLAY
variable.
Database
Object Data Manager (ODM) is a database of system information integrated into AIX,
Data managed in ODM is stored and maintained as
Example of information stored in the ODM database are:
- Network configuration
- Logical volume management configuration
- Installed software information
- Information for logical devices or software drivers
- List of all AIX supported devices
- Physical hardware devices installed and their configuration
- Menus, screens and commands that SMIT uses
See also
- AOS, IBM's educational-market port of 4.3BSD
- IBM PowerHA SystemMirror (formerly HACMP)
- List of Unix systems
- nmon
- Operating systems timeline
- Service Update Management Assistant
- Vital Product Data (VPD)
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