AIX

On Wednesday 31 March 2004 15:53, Jay West wrote: --snip-- 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. 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"