On Wednesday 31 March 2004 15:53, Jay West wrote:
> > Lyle wrote...
--snip--
> > Volumes when no one else had them - and SMIT - which made system
> > administration simple.
> HP has had LVM for as long as I can remember as an optional add-on, and SAM
> even longer.
Sun and SGI both had LVMs as add-ons later - and ultimately as an integrated
part of the standard server releases.
At the time IBM introduced a totally integrated LVM in AIX - it came under
heavy criticism from the rest of the UNIX community because disk drives in
AIX were entirely logical and not readily RAW capable. The fact that one
could add (or in some cases delete) drives and logical partitions in a
running UNIX system was critical for large commercial shops.
> Wasn't SAM around long before SMIT? I vaguely recall thinking
> that SAM came out first and IBM copied the idea but I'm not at all sure at
> this. Anyone know for sure and can set me straight?
I'm not sure either. I don't recollect SMIT being available with the first
release of AIX - But it was definitely available in the early eighties.
I've worked with HP-UX on 9000's - and it is relatively easy to work with -
but, in my opinion, AIX's SMIT is more complete and better integrated
(especially in logical volume management).
AIX also had from the begining and continues to have a very sophisticated and
well integrated patch management system which equals that of large enterprise
level systems (mainframes).
On another, but related topic, someone had commented on AIX and Open Source -
Early AIX releases were a pain - but later releases (say 4.3 on) were much
easier to work with. Now IBM has ported tons of freeware to AIX -
downloadable as source and binary from their AIX site - and is comfortably
Open Source friendly.
BTW: Just so you don't think I'm biased toward AIX (I'd like to think I am
"fair and balanced" ;-) Here is my picks in order of:
Favorite *NIX servers
---------------------------
Solaris
Linux
IRIX
AIX
HP-UX
Favorite *NIX workstations
---------------------------------
IRIX
Linux
Solaris
AIX
HP-UX
Lyle
--
Lyle Bickley
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
http://bickleywest.com
"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"
Received on Wed Mar 31 2004 - 18:30:19 BST