Myths:

Certifications are Vendor-centric

• While this is true, the negative outlook on this truth is unwarranted.  Most technologies are developed by specific vendors, and certain vendors are the best to oversee certification over the technology.  This means that while a certification may be vendor specific, that vendor’s certification will prove a highly technical mastery of the subject at hand.

Certification’s Life Cycle Is Short

• This is a benefit of the changing times and increasingly powerful IT innovations.  The ability to prove mastery over a current, cutting edge technology has many benefits and employers do see a difference between those certified in archaic technologies and those keeping up with innovation and trends

Certifications Are Not Real-World Oriented

• This criticism has holes in it, being that real world changes and is different from place to place.  Holding certifications in multiple technologies at different levels shows your ability to understand multiple aspects of a technology.  Many certifications also provide real world simulations or environments as a part of the process, and therefore this myth loses truth between vendors and technologies

Certifications Have Been Devalued

• It has been proven that those holding certifications have higher than average salaries, and that cheating is becoming increasingly difficult if not impossible for many certifications.

No Oversight Body

• The Information Technology Certification Council (ITCC) was formed to oversee the certification process and is comprised of many IT leaders such as IBM, HP and Microsoft

Degree vs. Certification vs. Experience

• Certifications prove a deeper understanding and knowledge of specific technologies that degrees cannot match.  Also, certifications speak volumes to those holding them.  Certifications are often seen as tie breakers when other credentials are equal

HR People Are Not In Touch with the Real World

• Certifications stand as a clear delimiter of in depth knowledge over a subject and therefore are an obvious benefit to HR execs.

Budget Cuts

• Studies have shown that companies supporting tuition and certification reimbursement attract higher attention and therefore these remain to be values of top competitor companies.

Glut of Certified People

• A gap exists between the required knowledge and the available skilled professionals.  Certifications help bridge that gap by providing the market with skilled employees.

No One Knows Which Certs Matter

• Certifications add a widely accepted benefit to any professional.  An employer needn’t know the specifics of the certification to understand the benefit of hiring certified professionals.

Overall I found this write up to be beneficial and to provide further justification for seeking certifications whether you are currently employed with an organization that provides reimbursement, or if you are on the job market and looking for an edge over your competition

• Multiple choice
• Video recording
• Computer based
• Timed
• Given a scrap of paper for notes
• Cannot bring cell phone’s into room

If you go to the IBM website you will see that most tests are broken down into categories.  These breakdowns are very accurate as you also get a print out at the end of how you did in each category. If you aren’t strong in a subject, LEARN IT.  It won’t be like in highschool where the teacher says something might be on the exam and it isn’t.  Each category listed is in fact on the exam, with weighting how it is outlined.

1. Identify resources used by Cluster Aware AIX
2. Configure dump devices and analyze output
3. Determine elements necessary to reduce single points of failure
4. Understand geographical logical volume manager (GLVM)
5. Maintain hardware (CEC/Blade Hardware), deferred or concurrent firmware, AMM firmware (for Power Blades), whether an adapter replacement or new installation.

Storage Management (21%)

1. Create and manage filesystems
2. Create and manage logical volumes
3. Create and manage volume groups
4. Manage physical and virtual devices
5. Manage storage devices (traditional disk, Solid State Drives, and tape) including redundancy

System and Network Security (4%)

1. Configure Role Based Access Control
2. Configure and Manage remote access

Partition Management (11%)

1. Configure and manage Logical Partitions (LPARs), including DLPAR operations
2. Create and manage Workload Partitions (WPAR), including Versioned WPARs and planning for Live Application Mobility
3. Understand HMC, SDMC and IVM interfaces
4. Create and Manage VIO Server partitions (including working with virtual repositories)
5. Understand and explain LPAR and WPAR migration and mobility at a basic level

Performance Management and Tuning

1. Use performance monitoring tools, and plan for future growth
2. Analyze output from performance monitoring tools
3. Configure system tunables to support optimal application performance

Network Management (11%)

1. Configure network devices (including Etherchannel, IPv4, and IPv6)
2. Troubleshoot network issues
3. Configure TCP/IP, with and without VLAN support

System Management (18%)

1. Create, maintain and modify user accounts
2. Manage services and subsystems (using chtcp, etc)
3. Configure Electronic Service Agent
4. Configure the system and device attributes
5. Use AIX system management tools (for example: DSM, Director, NIM)
6. Install, apply, commit, or reject software
7. Create and manage paging space
8. Use Cron and At functions

Install and Manage AIX (11%)

1. Understand and manage AIX instance startup
2. Backup and restore AIX
3. Migrate WPARs from AIX 6 to AIX 7
4. Install AIX and use NIM environments
5. Install Versioned WPARs

General administrative tasks (7%)

1. Create and use ksh and Perl scripts at a basic level
2. Use AIX commands such as TAR, CPIO, DD, RPM, SAVEVGSTRUC, and explain their use

1. Shutdown and reboot the system → shutdown -h, shutdown -r
2. Start or stop logical partitions → HMC
3. Recognize system or partition hangs and crashes

To shutdown or reboot the lpar from the lpar itself:

shutdown -> Shuts down the lpar

shutdown -r -> Reboots the lpar

Start or stop logical partitions

This process is performed from the HMC (stopping an lpar is the same as shutdown).

Select Systems, Specified System, Check the LPAR -> Operations

**If you would like to start a new profile, or initiate changes made to a profile, you will need to shutdown and start up the lpar

When shutting down the LPAR it will ask you if you are replacing the battery.  Make sure you don’t select this as this will call home to IBM (unless you want to do that…)

Recognize system or partition hangs and crashes

There are many ways to monitor and check the status on your LPAR.  Make sure you use the “errpt” command to view the error report.  AIX has a system hang detection in place, more info here, which will write to a log file upon system hang.

1. Describe the function and use of smit → system management interface tool for menu driven admin tools
2. Use ‘man’ pages → man [cmd], man -k “keyword”
3. View system logs and errors (errrpt, syslog, alog)
4. Create, read, delete and forward mail → mail, mail -s “Subject” [destination] < input file, mail [usr]
5. Use commands to find devices and determine their status (lsdev, lscfg) → cfgmgr, lsdev,
6. Understand and run different types of backups → mksysb
7. Understand environment variables (e.g. TERM, EDITOR)

Describe the function and use of smit

System Management Interface Tool for menu driven admin tools

Smit is a menu driven tool that has all of the functions an admin would need to perform built into a step by step process.  Proceed through the menu to choose the action you would like to take, and use these methods to increase your efficiency

**NOTE using smit you can use the function keys (ie F1) or in some cases you may find it better to use the esc sequence.  If you find your function keys don’t perform well, use esc + the corresponding number.  IE F1 = esc+1

For yes/no options, tab between choices

When a “+” appears beside an input box, use F4 or esc+4 to view choices

Any mandatory fields are marked with an “*”

After smit performs an action, use F6 or esc+6 to see the commands smit ran

Use ‘man’ pages

Man pages, or manual pages, are a standard to all flavours of unix and linux.  While AIX does feature man pages on most commands, IBM also offers the Info Center, for any and all help with AIX commands and questions.

man command -> This will provide you with the manual pages for a command

man -k keyword -> This will search the man pages for your keyword, in case you don’t know the specific command

View system logs and errors 

AIX offers two very versatile tools for error log and system log viewing.

errpt -> This tool outputs the contents of error logs into a report which you can filter through, or use flags to select only the errors you are interested in.  This is a very nice tool for consolidating error reports and providing you with a central location for error checking

alog -> This tool, which works off of standard input, will provide you with much of the functionality of errpt and can tap into places such as the console which is very important in problem determination

Create, read, delete and forward mail

The mail interface can be launched by the “mail” command.  This will provide you with a user interface allowing you to view and action any mail in your inbox.  Issue the following commands from within the interface:

mail -s “Subject” destination < input file -> This is a simple command to send a mail message to someone in one command.  This can be placed in a script or run from command line.

mail user -> Issue this command to send mail using the step by step process

Use commands to find devices and determine their status (lsdev, lscfg)

lsdev -Cc device_type -> This command will show any devices that fall within the specified type

lscfg -l device -> Once you find the device name using “lsdev” you can issue the list configuration command to view its configuration

lsattr -El device -> This command will show you all attributes of a specified device

Understand and run different types of backups

If all you want to do is backup specific files to an external resource, you can very simply use tar to package up the files and move them to another device.  There are much more elegant tools however, many of them specific to AIX.  One of the best backups tools for AIX is the mksysb command.  This command will perform a full backup of all system files (rootvg), and will maintain structure and provide you with a simple means of restoring your information in case of an emergency.  Alternatively, you can use tools such as savevg or alt_disk_install which allow you to create backups of your volume group or disk (respectively) onto another medium to create more or less a carbon copy

Understand environment variables (e.g. TERM, EDITOR)

env -> To view all current environment variables, issue this command

VARIABLE=value -> To edit an environment variable, for this session, edit it like any other variable

**Note: all environment variables are capitalized

echo $VARIABLE -> view a specific variable value

To permanently change environment variables, edit your .profile or .kshrc files

eloquent

1. Determine which processes are currently running on the system → ps -ef
2. Stop a process, or running or pending job. → kill -9 [pid], kill %[job number]
3. Use at and cron to manage scheduled tasks → crontab -l, crontab -e (minute hour dom month weekday cmd), at [now + 2 days, 5 pm), at -l
4. View pending jobs → jobs
5. Understand and use topas

Determine which processes are currently running on the system

ps -ef -> This command will show you all of the currently running processes.  If necessary, pipe it to grep (ps -ef | grep keyword) to filter, or to more (ps -ef | more) to display it one page at a time

Stop a process, or running or pending job

In order to communicate with a process, you must issue the kill command.

Once you perform the "ps -ef" as mentioned earlier, you will get the PID (process identification number).  With this we can issue a kill (with flags) to the PID

kill PID -> will result in a termination flag sent to the process

kill -9 PID -> will result in the immediate shut down of a process (can have ill effects)

kill %job_number -> You can also issue a kill command on a job (discussed later)

Use at and cron to manage scheduled tasks

Your crontab is a scheduling tool that allows you to issue recurring tasks at specified times. Each user has their own crontab and can edit it as seen below

crontab -l -> display the contents of the crontab

crontab -e -> edit the contents of the crontab

(minute hour dom month weekday cmd) -> format of crontab entry (substitute any recurring flag with a "*"

at [now + 2 days, 5 pm] command-> issue the “at” command to perform a one time schedule of a command.

at -l -> show all scheduled tasks using “at”

View pending jobs

Your jobs (anything running in the background related to your session) can be found simply by issuing the “jobs” command.  With the job number you can issue the kill command as previously mentioned

Understand and use topas

topas can be used to report statistics on your machine.  This tool is especially useful for retrieving detailed information on an lpar at the present moment.

topas -d20 -i2 -n20 -p20 -w20 -c20 -> This will run topas and display all details at a 20 second refresh rate

User management (8%)

1. Reset passwords → passwd [user]
2. Show which groups a user belongs to → lsgroup ALL, lsuser ALL
3. View and understand user permissions
4. Control logged-in users → who, finger, fuser -u (-k -x -c) [file, dir], kill users shell
5. Understand the login process (what happens during login) → getty → /etc/passwd → /etc/security/passwd → .profile

Reset passwords

passwd -> this command will change the current users password

passwd username -> if you are root, you can use this to change another user’s password (doing this will force the user to reset his/her password on login)

You can also use smitty to change passwords:

smit -> Security and Users -> Passwords -> Change a User’s Password

Show which groups a user belongs to

lsgroup groupname -> list the characteristics of a group, including users

lsuser username -> list the characteristics of a user, including the groups

id -gn username -> list the primary group associated with a user

smit -> Security and Users -> Users -> Change / Show Characteristics of a User -> username

View and understand user permissions

AIX maintains user permissions slightly different than the standard UNIX.  The similarities are as follows:

• All files have permissions, which come down to read, write and execute permissions
• Each file separates permissions by user, group and other.  The file is owned by a user and a group, and these permissions reflect those individuals.  The other permission is for everyone that does not fall into the user or group position.
• To view these permissions, issue the “ls -l” command.  Here you will see the permissions in a “rwxrwxrwx” format.  r-read, w-write, x-execute.  First 3 for user, next 3 for group, last 3 for other.
• Change permissions using “chmod” “chown” or “chgrp”

Control logged-in users

who -> This command will tell you what users are currently logged in, what time they logged in at and from where.

finger user -> This command will give you more details about a specific user.  The shell, home directory, how long they have been logged in, and what their plan is (if they set it)

fuser -u (-k -x -c) file/directory -> Identifies a which user is currently using a specific file or directory.  Good for if you are trying to modify a file, unmount a folder etc.

The easiest way to kick a user off an lpar is to simply kill the user’s shell.  ”ps -ef | grep user” and then issue the kill command on the PID.

Understand the login process (what happens during login)

• User enters id at login prompt.
• getty starts login program and checks /etc/passwd and /etc/security/passwd.
• start login shell.
• .profile runs

Korn shell (9%)

1. Redirect standard in, standard out, standard error, and pipe output to another command → ls < cat listfiles 1> output.txt 2>errlog.txt | grep user
2. Use shell history to look at previous commands → history, set -o vi,
3. Run shell scripts → if executable ($ scriptname), if not (./scriptname) (ksh scriptname)
4. Use wildcard, regular expressions, and meta characters on the command line → * ? [A-Z] [a-z] [0-9] + {5}
5. Run a command in the background, and so it does not terminate upon exit → nohup cmd &

Redirect standard in, standard out, standard error, and pipe output to another command

In UNIX, when issuing commands there are 3 main parts that are involved with the command.  The first is standard in (<), which is the input the command uses and acts upon.  The output of the command, when issuing a verbose command, is referred to as the standard out(1>).  If an error occurs, we refer to the output of this error as standard error(2>).

For an example of all of these, lets look at the following command:

ls < string1 1> output.txt 2>errlog.txt | grep user

In this case, “string1” is the standard input going into the “ls” command.  Out of that command is the standard out going to output.txt and the standard error going to errlog.txt.

UNIX also supports the idea of a pipe ( | ) which is the equivalent of sending the output of a command to another.  A common occurrence of this is when you want to find a specific term in a file, but don’t want to read the entire thing.  Many people use “grep” to find the line which holds a search word.  To use grep, we often cat a file and pipe it to grep.

cat testfile | grep

Use shell history to look at previous commands

To view your shell history, you can do a number of things.  One command which will quickly output your most recent history is the aptly named “history” command.

If you would like to issue a recent command again you can do the following.

set -o vi -> this will set your session to use vi editing mode

escape-k -> this will bring up your last command

From here you can issue standard vi movements and editing commands to iterate through commands and make changes

Run shell scripts

You can run shell scripts a number of ways:

$ scriptname.sh -> if the script is executable, and in your current directory or path, simply issue its name

./scriptname.sh -> if the script is not executable, you will have to use ./ to run it (while in the current directory)

ksh scriptname.sh -> to explicitly state the shell to run the script with, simply issue the shell command with the script name

Use wildcard, regular expressions, and meta characters on the command line

Many of the wildcards and meta characters below are recognized by your shell when issuing commands:

* ? [A-Z] [a-z] [0-9] + {5}

You can use these to substitute parts of file names etc. to make your life a little easier.

Example: if you have a long file name, begin typing its name until it becomes unique to only that file, and complete it with the asterisk wildcard.  ”cd /etc/proj*” will take you to /etc/projects

Run a command in the background, and so it does not terminate upon exit

When you issue a command, the command is tied to your session.  Log out of the session and your command will close as well.  To rectify this, perform the following:

nohup command &

nohup -> nohup will allow the command/program to ignore the hangup signal (No Hang Up)

& -> the ampersand will allow the command to be run in the background

Using vi (9%)

1. Create or open a file using vi → vi [filename]
2. Close a file using vi, both with and without saving changes → :wq, :q!, :w newfile
3. Add, delete and change text using vi → i,a,o,O,x,dw,d$,dd,r,R
4. Find/replace using basic substitution, and search for text strings using vi → s/find/replace/g
5. Copy and/or move text using vi → yy,dd, p, P
6. Navigating within vi (changing cursor position, etc.) → arrows, hjkl, ctrl-d, ctrl-u, ctrl-b, ctrl-f

Create or open a file using vi

To initialize vi, simply call it in the command line using the “vi” command

vi existing_file -> you can edit a file in vi by issuing this command

vi new_file -> you can create a new file and begin editing it in vi by issuing this command

Close a file using vi, both with and without saving changes

While in vi, drop down to command mode using “:”

:w -> to write changes to file

:q -> to quit vi

:q! -> quit without making changes

:wq -> to write changes and exit vi

:w newfile -> write the changes to a new file

Add, delete and change text using vi

i -> change to “insert” mode at cursor

a ->change to “insert” mode after cursor

o -> open new line below and change to “insert” mode

O -> open new line above and change to “insert” mode

x -> delete character

dw -> delete word

d$ -> delete until end of line

dd -> delete entire line

r -> replace single character

R -> switch to “overwrite” mode

Find/replace using basic substitution, and search for text strings using vi

/search_string -> search the document for a string.  use ‘n’ for next result and ‘b’ for back

s/search_string/replace_with -> basic means of issuing find a replace in vi (only on current line and first occurence)

s/search_string/replace_with/g -> issue find and replace globally (only on current line)

%s/search_string/replace_with/g -> issue find and replace globally on entire file

Copy and/or move text using vi

The concept of cut/copy and paste in vi is based on the terms yank and paste

yy -> yank current line

dd -> cut current line

p -> paste clipboard contents under cursor

P -> paste clipboard contents above cursor

**NOTE** once you yank or cut something to your clipboard, you cannot enter insert mode.  The clipboard empties when entering insert mode so be very careful when cutting and pasting

Navigating within vi (changing cursor position, etc.)

To navigate within vi there are multiple options.  The easiest by far is the arrow keys.  Others are as follows:

hjkl -> h -left, j-down, k-up, l-right

ctrl-d -> down half screen

ctrl-u -> up half screen

ctrl-b -> page backwards

ctrl-f -> page forward

If you are looking for exam locations or to book an exam, use this link.  Here you can search through the exams, enter your location and book the exam itself.  Depending on location you would be looking at a ballpark of $200 USD.

The most important thing to remember with IBM certifications is that a certain level of real world knowledge is needed.  It is not purely a textbook exam.  My advice is to work with the technology, at least for a little while to get your feet wet, before taking any advanced exams.

Also, make sure you check out the other posts related to AIX certifications

Good Luck and Happy Studying!