January 4, 2012, in category General Maintenance comments No comments

This is a brief explanation on how to utilize the command interface of the HMC in order to view and/or document all of the detailed information regarding your environment.  From the HMC you can use commands such as lssyscfg to find all necessary information concerning your lpars, each managed system or even the entire frame.

Once your virtualized environment reaches numbers about 20 or 30 you might run into troubles organizing where all of your resources have gone.  The HMC web interface does a great job out outlining the processing units, memory, environment and profile information, however you may run into scenarios where you don’t want to give all of the users access to the HMC, or you don’t want to bog down your HMC just for fact finding...

January 3, 2012, in category Miscellaneous comments No comments

AIX is the IBM operating system based on UNIX.  AIX is  specifically designed to work with IBM systems.  Advanced Interactive eXecutive supports multiple hardware platforms such as RS/6000, IBM Power, Power-PC, IBM System i, System/370 mainframes and PS/2 personal computers.

AIX, along with Mac OS X, Solaris and HP-UX is certified to The Open Group’s UNIX 03 standard.  Because it is UNIX based, it is programmed with C, and supports multiple shell environments and has the power to run Linux applications.

December 15, 2011, in category General Maintenance comments No comments

If you are anything like me you much prefer spending 15 minutes writing a script and letting it do all of the work rather than spending the two gruelling days pounding your face across the keyboard doing the same keystrokes and mouse click over and over.  Well if you aren’t willing to set up all of the SSH private keys in order to have passwordless access to all lpars in your environment, I have a much simpler solution to all of your problems.

From ...

December 12, 2011, in category Miscellaneous, Software comments One comment

Vi can either be one of your worst enemies or one of your best friends. Anyone new to unix/linux will typically have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that vi can be both necessary and efficient, especially if you are only used to graphical text editors.

December 12, 2011, in category General Maintenance comments No comments

The crontab file gives you the ability to run batch jobs or commands at a schedules interval as whatever user you would like. Cron will let you maintain automation and consistency in your reporting, documentation and/or outcome of your batch programs. Often times you don’t want to slow down your server during business hours and cron gives you the ability to schedule any job to run after hours. Also, some programs such as reporting tools need to run in increments throughout the day. Whether you are looking to run a mksysb once a week, a local backup every night, or an nmon refresh every 15 minutes, a few minutes of training with the cron will save you a lifetime of work.

To view the cron file
crontab -l
To edit the cron file
crontab -e

Cron works like this:

minute hour day-of-month month da...

December 8, 2011, in category Storage comments No comments

This post covers how to allocate a disk already mapped to an LPAR

Commands:

• lspv -> list physical disks
• lspv [device] -> list physical device
• lspv –l [device] -> list VGs on device
• lscfg –vl hdiskx -> get lun ID and other information
• lsvg -> list VGs
• lsvg –l [vg] list file systems on VG
• lsvg [vg] -> list info about VG
• ls –l /dev -> display LVs in /dev
• df –g -> check space (in gb)
• grep –p [file system] /etc/filesystems -> find file in /etc/filesystems file

Checklist:

Steps:

**If no LV specified then proceed straight to Create File System

Smit -> System Storage -> Logical volume -> Add

• Volume Group?
• Name?
• PPs?
• Disk?
• Logical Volume Type?

Smit ->...

December 8, 2011, in category Software comments No comments

A quick guide on how to install file sets from a NIM server

rsct -> Reliable Scalable Cluster Technology

adt -> Application Development Toolkit

rte -> Run Time Environment

bff -> Backup File Format

rpm -> Red Hat Package Manager

ODM -> Equivalent to Windows Registry

**If filename does not contain *.rpm then it is bff -> IBM file set

Checklist

Commands

• lslpp –l [package] -> list installed packages
• oslevel –r -> View technology level
• oslevel –s -> View software level
• showmount –e [nim server] -> View all exports of NIM server (or any other server)
• whereis [program] -> Locate program on LPAR
• which_fileset [name] -> find file set for specific program
• lslpp –w [full path to program] ->show installed file sets for a program

*...

December 8, 2011, in category LPAR Configuration comments No comments

How to upgrade an LPAR to a new version of AIX using a mksysb

Checklist

LPAR Information

VIO Information

Backup SSH Files

• copy ssh file to new location

   cp –r /etc/ssh /etc/ssh.backup 

Map disks from VIO

• If new disks are being allocated for additional storage or JFS to JFS2 Conversion, you will need to map the disk through the VIO server
• Once storage is allocated through SVC, login to VIO server
• detect new hard ware

   cfgdev 

• confirm LUN ID with disks allocated by storage team

   lsdev –dev hdiskx –v...

December 8, 2011, in category LPAR Configuration comments 3 comments

A quick guide showing the steps on how to create a new LPAR based upon a standard(golden) image

Checklist:

• IP address(es)
• LUN number(s)
• Host name
• Processing unit requirements of the new LPAR
• Memory requirements of the new LPAR
• Dedicate I/O requirements of the new LPAR
• Shared processor pool in which the new LPAR will be put Virtual I/O requirements of the new LPAR

HMC

1. Login as hscroot

2. “Systems Management”->“Servers” ->select server ->“Configuration”->”Create Logical Partition”->”AIX or Linux”
3. Do not change the system assigned partition ID. Input hostname as partition name -> click “Next”
4. Use hostname as profile name. DO NOT select “Use all the resources in the system” unless this will be the only LPAR on the system. Click “Next” to continue.
5. Choose ”Sh...