Unix ... "It's Everywhere Man"

Johnny Cash once sang a song called “I've Been Everywhere, Man” and the chorus of the song lists all the places he has visited on his travels:-

I've been to:

Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota,

Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota,

Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma,

Tampa, Panama, Mattawa…..etc

Developed in the 1970s, Unix was primarily used in Universities and it was not until the 1980s with servers and workstations from companies like Sun, that it became commercially prevalent.  In the 90s HP, IBM and Silicon Graphics, entered the market with their own version of Unix on proprietary hardware. For the next 10-15 years these companies all competed to try and outdo each other.

Around this time a young Finnish software engineer named Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel and made it available to the world for free. He invited others to add to the kernel provided that they keep their contributions free. As such Linux gained a dedicated following with thousands of programmers developing the code. Seen as the reserve of hobbyists and bit twiddlers, Linux certainly was not considered a rival to the likes of Sun, IBM and HP, however, it had one distinct advantage over the others in that it did not require proprietary hardware and would  run on pretty much any Intel x86 PC to Server.

For those who did not want to run freeware, along came Enterprise Linux. This is a term used to reference any distribution of an open source Linux operating system that is packaged for the commercial market. Some of the different Enterprise Linux distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Oracle Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLES).

These days Linux runs on just about any hardware you can name, from Android - an operating system based on the Linux kernel for mobile phones - to supercomputers. Most firewalls and virtualisation software such as VMware are based on Linux. The open source nature of the kernel and software means it can be ported to any architecture and, as such, has replaced the proprietary versions of the big players with the exception of IBM’s AIX. 

So if you think Unix is only for nerds, the fact of the matter is you’re already using it because Unix is …“Everywhere, Man “

For further information on Unix, please do not hesitate to contact Celerity Limited.

Neil Hulme, Technical Consultant, Celerity Limited

Enterprise Wireless

I have previously written about securing mobile phones and tablets in the workplace with IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices. With a great number of devices such as phones, tablets and laptops appearing in the office, more demands are being put on our wireless networks. It’s not just the number of devices though; we are expecting more from our ‘gadgets’, so bandwidth demands are higher now too, and these demands will only increase.

Wi-Fi standards have been improving over the years, with 802.11n being the standard on most devices today. This has been fine for most of our needs, so much so that very few people in Celerity connect to our network with an Ethernet cable. On the rare occasion I would use Ethernet is when I want to upload an ISO into a VMware datastore. Even those days might be numbered soon, as Wi-Fi is trying to catch up to the speeds of Ethernet with what they’re calling Gigabit Wi-Fi…

Well… they’re calling it Gigabit Wi-Fi, but faster than gigabit speeds are only really going to be achieved in optimum conditions. 802.11ac, as it’s snappily called, is the fifth generation Wi-Fi standard and is being released in 2 waves.

Wave 1

Wave 1 was finalised in December last year and products are already on the market. The theoretical speed of 802.11ac is 1300 Mbps, using triple stream SU-MIMO (Single-User multiple-input and multiple-output) antennas with wider channels (now 80 MHz). This more than triples the theoretical speed over 802.11n. The number of spatial streams have doubled from four to eight, potentially doubling the number of clients too. Beamforming, which overcame RF interference by optimising transmissions, which was introduced in 802.11n is now standard, and a full move to the 5 GHz band means that 802.11ac suffers from less interference and crowding than the 2.4 GHz band of 802.11n and below. This means that you’ll need a dual-band access point if you want full backwards compatibility with older 2.4 GHz band devices, otherwise you’ll only be able to go back as far as the 5 GHz variant of 802.11n, luckily most 802.11ac access point are dual-band. All taken together, Wave 1 of 802.11ac offers an efficient evolution of Wi-Fi.

Wave 2

Wave 2 is expected next year and offers doubling, and possibly even quadrupling, the number of compatible clients an access point can support at once using MU-MIMO (Multi-User MIMO) antennas. Beamforming in Wave 2 is planned to allow for communication of multiple single stream devices on the same channel. A further increase to 160 MHz channels will allow for a higher throughput in less congested areas too. All taken together, the maximum data rate of Wave 2 is hoped to be 6.9 Gbps. However, Wave 2 isn’t finalised yet, so these figures could change.

So when is the right time to upgrade?

Manufacturers are planning ahead and have future-proofed some of their access points by making them modular. These field replicable Wave 1 modules will be able to be swapped out for Wave 2 modules making future upgrades easier.

                          cA Ciso Aironet 3700i and 3700e access point with Wave 1 module

Some aggressive pricing means that currently some 802.11ac access points aren’t too much more expensive than 802.11n access points. Now would be a good time make the move if your wireless network is struggling under the strain.

Want to know more?  Contact Celerity today.

John Carson, Technical Limited

Celerity Limited

To read this article on Celerity's website, please click here

The Value of the VIOS Media Library

 Introduction

I was recently tasked with building a new AIX 7.1 LPAR on a customer IBM Power 750. This LPAR was to become the NIM Master for the customers’ environment. Naturally, I looked for the quickest, most efficient method to accomplish the installation.
 

Overview

The system setup consisted of a HMC, dual VIOS configuration and my newly created HMC LPAR profile, minus its’ O/S. There was no other easily available installation device to deploy from, so my options were limited in terms of the AIX installation process.

In the past, this scenario would have meant obtaining the physical AIX 7.1 Base Operating System DVD media and travelling to the customer site to insert the installation disk into the DVD drive to perform the AIX install.

However, with the VIOS already in place, I figured out that I could utilise IBM virtualisation technology to install my new AIX 7.1 O/S.

With the setup as it was, I had the ability to create and configure a VIOS Virtual Media Library. I could then use this Virtual Media Library to store an .iso file image of the AIX 7.1 Base Operating System and use this image to boot and install AIX 7.1 onto my new LPAR.

Prerequisites

·         There should be an existing pair of virtual SCSI adapters paired between the VIOS and the client LPAR. In my case, since the client did not have an OS installed, I verified the adapter pairing through the partition properties profile on the HMC.

·         Works with VIOS running ioslevels 2.2.0, 2.2.1.1

·         There needs to be sufficient space on your VIOS to accommodate the .iso file, typically, ~5G.

·         The ‘padmin’ password on your VIOS.

 OK, So…

What's the procedure to create and use a VIOS Virtual Media Library?

What's the procedure to install an AIX base ISO to an AIX LPAR using a VIOS Virtual Machine Library?

 

Let’s Setup the Virtual Machine Library to Perform the AIX Install…

First of all, I downloaded the AIX 7.1 Base Operating System disk 1 of 2 AIX_7100-03-03_BASE_DSK_1_OF_2.ISO file from the IBM Software Access Catalogue and transferred the file to my newly created /home/padmin/AIX_iso sub-directory on the customer VIOS.

With the .iso file safely on the VIOS, I could now go ahead and create my media repository. But first of all, I had to make sure a repository didn’t already exist:

$ lsrep

The DVD repository has not been created yet.

$

OK, no repository exists, so it was safe for me to create it. My VIOS contained only rootvg, and I decided to allocate the repository 10G of space:

$ mkrep -sp rootvg -size 10G

Virtual Media Repository Created

Repository created within "VMLibrary" logical volume

$

A re-run of the lsrep command now showed me that the DVD repository had been successfully created:

$ lsrep

Size(mb) Free(mb) Parent Pool         Parent Size      Parent Free

   10198    10198 rootvg                   279552           214016

$

It was now time to create the virtual media disk – I decided to call it “base_71_TL3”. This command took a couple of minutes to run:

$ mkvopt -name base_71_TL3 -file /home/padmin/AIX_iso/AIX_7100-03-03_BASE_DSK_1_OF_2.ISO -ro

$

I could now verify that the virtual media disk was part of the repository:

$ lsrep

Size(mb) Free(mb) Parent Pool         Parent Size      Parent Free

   10198     6109 rootvg                   279552           214016

Name                                    File Size Optical         Access

base_71_TL3                                  4089 None            ro

$

In my customer environment, vhost2 happened to be the vhost ID associated with my new LPAR profile that I had already set up on the HMC. The next step was to create the file backed adapter and map it to vhost2:

$ mkvdev -fbo -vadapter vhost2

vtopt1 Available

$

Next, I loaded the virtual media disk onto the vtopt device:

$ loadopt -vtd vtopt1 -disk base_71_TL3

$

Notice now that the ‘Optical’ value has changed from 'None' to 'vtopt1':

$ lsrep

Size(mb) Free(mb) Parent Pool         Parent Size      Parent Free

   10198     6109 rootvg                   279552           214016

Name                                    File Size Optical         Access

base_71_TL3                                  4089 vtopt1          ro

$

I verified that the vtopt1 backing device was in fact the virtual media disk location:

$ lsmap -vadapter vhost2

SVSA            Physloc                                      Client Partition ID

--------------- -------------------------------------------- ------------------

vhost2          U8233.E8B.06C7BCP-V1-C4                      0x00000014

VTD                   vtopt1

Status                Available

LUN                   0x8100000000000000

Backing device        /var/vio/VMLibrary/base_71_TL3

Physloc

Mirrored              N/A

$

 At this point, I was ready to install AIX onto my new LPAR using the VIOS Virtual Machine Library

The Benefits…

It took me twenty six minutes to transfer the AIX .iso file from my local machine to the destination VIOS.

There was no requirement to physically attend the customer site to insert the media. The AIX installation was performed remotely throughout its entirety.

Savings were made in terms of travel costs, hotel and subsistence expenses. There was no time wasted travelling to and from site and there was no harm caused to the environment.

There was no inconvenience to the customer in terms of having to book and sign me onto site, to reserve a parking space.

The distance from my place of work to the customer data centre is nearly 200 miles. The car journey would have taken three hours and nineteen minutes ‘in current traffic’. To accomplish the same time savings by car, I would have had to drive at an average non-stop speed of 456.92 mph!  

Should you require any further information regarding a VIOS Virtual Media Library please do not hesitate to contact Celerity

Chris Lang, Technical Consultant

Celerity Limited 

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