IBM has recently announced a new version of the POWER9 scale out servers, these are the entry level servers that make up the P05, P10 and P20 Process Group ranges. If you’ve been paying attention to the past server announcements, you would be excused for assuming this was a POWER9+ as IBM did with the […]
AIX tech tip: Bye-bye loops – use the ‘apply’ command instead
One of the best kept secrets of the AIX command line is the “apply” command. Never heard of it? Well, welcome to the club. Two colleagues and I had over 60 years’ combined experience on AIX and, between us, we had never once come across “apply”. So, what does it do and why should you […]
Has IBM halted Power’s sales slide?
IBM reported its latest quarterly results this week and, for a change, there was actually something to cheer about for Power people. If one looked beyond the corporation’s generally lacklustre headline figures, it seemed that it had finally stopped the downward spiral of its Power p and Power i server sales. Admittedly, one had to […]
AIX tech tip: a tribute to AIX devices
When you have a device connected to AIX, such as a disk or a tape drive, you can discover it using cfgmgr. As you’d expect, it will have the default parameters that are used for the device driver. Sometimes you’ll want to change these parameters – usually to allow you to tune the device for […]
AIX tech tip: How to scan new devices with a single command
There are things I really love about virtualisation for Power Systems. I probably appreciate some things more than other people do because I got to see how things used to work many years ago. A combination of physical and virtual enhancements has made life a lot easier than it used to be. I remember when […]
German engineer revs up SAP with BLU Acceleration
A German electronics firm has chosen DB2 with BLU Acceleration over SAP HANA or SAP Business Warehouse Accelerator in a bid to speed up data delivery. Headquartered in Neuhausen, Balluff is a world-leading manufacturer of sensor solutions, employing around 2,750 people in 50 countries. The firm runs its operation on Power p and, as part […]
IBM’s AIX made the most money from Unix in Q2
IBM made the most cash from Unix servers in this year’s second quarter but Oracle sold the most machines. That’s according to an erudite analysis of the latest figures from Gartner by Timothy Prickett Morgan on EnterpriseTech. Prickett Morgan’s reading of the Gartner ‘s latest worldwide quarterly server stats has Oracle down as shipping 11,108 […]
Time-saving tips for AIX device configuration
When you have a one-off command to run on AIX, you just type it in. If you have to do it hundreds of times, you are better off if you script it. But what if the scripting still isn’t fast enough? I recently had to remove hundreds of virtual SCSI (vSCSI) devices from a Virtual […]
Latest Power figures: reasons to be cheerful?
IBM reported its figures for the second quarter of 2014 in July and, once again, revenue from Power Systems was down. Its Systems and Technology division’s $3.3bn takings fell 11% year over year. Revenue from Power Systems fell 28%. In the previous couple of quarters, Power Systems revenues were down 22% and 31%. Such numbers […]