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55-487: PureSystems can host four different operating systems ( AIX , IBM i , Linux , Windows ) and five hypervisors ( Hyper-V , KVM , PowerVM , VMware , Xen ) on two different instruction set architectures: Power ISA and x86 . PureSystems is marketed as a converged system , which packages multiple information technology components into a single product. The architecture itself is called IBM Flex System . It aims at managing hybrid cloud infrastructure environments "out of

110-512: A beta test version of AIX 5L for the IA-64 ( Itanium ) architecture in 2001, but this never became an official product due to lack of interest. The Apple Network Server (ANS) systems were PowerPC-based systems designed by Apple Computer to have numerous high-end features that standard Apple hardware did not have, including swappable hard drives, redundant power supplies, and external monitoring capability. These systems were more or less based on

165-399: A home appliance , which are generally closed and sealed , and are not serviceable by the user or owner. The hardware and software are delivered as an integrated product and may even be pre-configured before delivery to a customer, to provide a turn-key solution for a particular application. Unlike general purpose computers, appliances are generally not designed to allow the customers to change

220-527: A Text Formatting System package priced at $ 200. The TCP/IP stack for AIX PS/2 retailed for another $ 300. The X Window System package was priced at $ 195, and featured a graphical environment called the AIXwindows Desktop , based on IXI's X.desktop . The C and FORTRAN compilers each had a price tag of $ 275. Locus also made available their DOS Merge virtual machine environment for AIX, which could run MS DOS 3.3 applications inside AIX; DOS Merge

275-540: A contentious move that resulted in v3 containing no PL.8 code and being somewhat more "pure" than v2. Other notable subsystems included: In addition, AIX applications can run in the PASE subsystem under IBM i . IBM formerly made the AIX for RS/6000 source code available to customers for an additional fee; in 1991, IBM customers could order the AIX 3.0 source code for a one-time charge of US$ 60,000; subsequently, IBM released

330-409: A customized operating system running over specialized hardware, neither of which are likely to be compatible with the other systems previously deployed. Customers lose flexibility. One may believe that a proprietary embedded operating system, or operating system within an application, can make the appliance much more secure from common cyber attacks. However, the opposite is true. Security by obscurity

385-561: A few of which are shown below. Since the whole concept of an appliance rests on keeping such implementation details away from the end user, it is difficult to match these patterns to specific appliances, particularly since they can and do change without affecting external capabilities or performance. Sometimes, these techniques are mixed. For example, a VPN appliance might contain a limited access software firewall running on Linux, with an encryption ASIC to speed up VPN access. Some computer appliances use solid state storage , while others use

440-712: Is a database of system information integrated into AIX, analogous to the registry in Microsoft Windows . A good understanding of the ODM is essential for managing AIX systems. Data managed in ODM is stored and maintained as objects with associated attributes . Interaction with ODM is possible via application programming interface (API) library for programs, and command-line utilities such as odmshow , odmget , odmadd , odmchange and odmdelete for shell scripts and users. SMIT and its associated AIX commands can also be used to query and modify information in

495-489: Is a highly reliable and scalable database platform. It is aimed at e-commerce (i.e. retail and credit card processing environments) which depends on rapid handling of transactions and interactions. These transactions are small in size, but their sheer volume and frequency require a specialized environment. The new system can provide 5x performance improvement, partly through advances in high performance storage. PureData System for Analytics builds on Netezza technology and it

550-418: Is a poor security decision, and appliances are often plagued by security issues as evidenced by the proliferation of IoT devices . The variety of computer appliances reflects the wide range of computing resources they provide to applications. Some examples: Aside from its deployment within data centers, many computer appliances are directly used by the general public. These include: Consumer uses stress

605-408: Is a pre-configured platform for platform as a service applications. It is optimized for transaction-oriented web and database applications. PureApplication comes with IBM Db2 database and WebSphere Application Server pre-configured so users can run their applications into a preconfigured middleware engine. Unlike PureFlex, which is sold by IBM Systems and Technology Group (STG) , PureApplication

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660-474: Is a series of proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM since 1986. The name stands for "Advanced Interactive eXecutive". Current versions are designed to work with Power ISA based server and workstation computers such as IBM's Power line. Originally released for the IBM RT PC RISC workstation in 1986, AIX has supported a wide range of hardware platforms, including

715-511: Is a standards-based - so-called expert integrated - system which architecturally integrates IBM InfoSphere BigInsights , Hadoop-based software, server ( IBM System x ), and storage into a single appliance. Moreover, it integrates with IBM DB2 , IBM Netezza , IBM PureData System for Analytics, and IBM InfoSphere Guardium . Compute nodes based on x86 processors from Intel . Compute nodes based on Power ISA -based processors from IBM . Both IBM and its partners provide software which

770-473: Is aimed at business intelligence that entails huge queries with complex algorithms. It provides a large library of database analytical functions for data warehouse applications, and can scale across the terabyte or petabytes running on the system. It can support extremely high volume high speed analytics for clients (e.g. mobile phone carriers who want to identify potential churn and provide offers to retain customers). PureData Systems for Operational Analytics

825-601: Is an operational warehouse system which supports real-time decision making. In contrast to PureData System for Analytics, which is aimed at handling large sets of data at a time, PureData for Operational Analytics is more or less a stream computing system that can analyze many small sets of data in real-time while PureData for Analytics will provide analysis only in hindsight, although with large sets of data. Potential uses of PureData Systems for Operational Analytics are fraud detection or analysis of rapid fluctuations in supply-and-demand cycles. PureData Systems for Hadoop H 1001

880-516: Is marketed by the IBM Software Group (SWG) . IBM claims that PureApplication allows for installation (or deployment) of new applications within four hours. The system's virtual pattern deployers encrypt on-disk data using Security First Corp's SPxBitFiler-IPS encryption technology, which is also licensed by IBM for its Cloud Data Encryption Service (ICDES). IBM PureApplication System is available in three classes: PureData Systems takes

935-834: Is specifically certified for PureSystems ("Ready for IBM PureSystems "). Currently, over 125 ISVs have already certified products for PureSystems, and business partners such as system integrators, resellers, distributors, ISVs or MSP can integrate PureSystems into their portfolio. PureSystems was announced April 11, 2012. It was mainly assembled at IBM Rochester Campus in Rochester , MN. But on March 6, 2013, IBM decided to shift production of Power Systems, PureSystems and PureFlex Systems servers to Guadalajara , Mexico from Rochester, Minnesota . After 2014, most systems will be assembled in Mexico. AIX AIX (pronounced / ˌ eɪ . aɪ . ˈ ɛ k s / ay-eye- EKS )

990-537: Is the System Management Interface Tool for AIX. It allows a user to navigate a menu hierarchy of commands, rather than using the command line. Invocation is typically achieved with the command smit . Experienced system administrators make use of the F6 function key which generates the command line that SMIT will invoke to complete it. SMIT also generates a log of commands that are performed in

1045-469: The smit.script file. The smit.script file automatically records the commands with the command flags and parameters used. The smit.script file can be used as an executable shell script to rerun system configuration tasks. SMIT also creates the smit.log file, which contains additional detailed information that can be used by programmers in extending the SMIT system. smit and smitty refer to

1100-687: The Power Macintosh hardware available at the time but were designed to use AIX (versions 4.1.4 or 4.1.5) as their native operating system in a specialized version specific to the ANS called AIX for Apple Network Servers. AIX was only compatible with the Network Servers and was not ported to standard Power Macintosh hardware. It should not be confused with A/UX , Apple's earlier version of Unix for 68k -based Macintoshes . The release of AIX version 3 (sometimes called AIX/6000 ) coincided with

1155-470: The AIX 3.1 source code in 1992, and AIX 3.2 in 1993. These source code distributions excluded certain files (authored by third-parties) which IBM did not have rights to redistribute, and also excluded layered products such as the MS-DOS emulator and the C compiler. Furthermore, in order to be able to license the AIX source code, the customer first had to procure source code license agreements with AT&T and

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1210-578: The BladeCenter chassis and Flex chassis are not interchangeable. Based upon the Flex Systems architecture (the components of which are individually available), there are three main products: PureFlex is a factory pre-configured and combined hardware-/software system for IaaS in terms of cloud computing . It combines server, network and storage. IBM PureFlex is available in three configurations: Express, Standard, Enterprise. PureApplication

1265-770: The IBM RS/6000 series and later Power and PowerPC -based systems, IBM System i , System/370 mainframes, PS/2 personal computers, and the Apple Network Server . Currently, it is supported on IBM Power Systems alongside IBM i and Linux . AIX is based on UNIX System V with 4.3BSD -compatible extensions. It is certified to the UNIX 03 and UNIX V7 specifications of the Single UNIX Specification , beginning with AIX versions 5.3 and 7.2 TL5, respectively. Older versions were certified to

1320-419: The ODM. ODM is stored on disk using Berkeley DB files. Example of information stored in the ODM database are: Computer appliance A computer appliance is a computer system with a combination of hardware , software , or firmware that is specifically designed to provide a particular computing resource. Such devices became known as appliances because of the similarity in role or management to

1375-563: The S/370 platform to be used as a build host for the 5ESS switch 's software. During this process, IBM made modifications to the TSS/370 Resident Supervisor to better support Unix. In 1984, IBM introduced its own Unix variant for the S/370 platform called VM/IX, developed by Interactive Systems Corporation using Unix System III. However, VM/IX was only available as a PRPQ (Programming Request for Price Quotation) and

1430-401: The UNIX 95 and UNIX 98 specifications. AIX was the first operating system to implement a journaling file system . IBM has continuously enhanced the software with features such as processor, disk, and network virtualization , dynamic hardware resource allocation (including fractional processor units), and reliability engineering concepts derived from its mainframe designs. Unix began in

1485-502: The University of California, Berkeley. The default shell was Bourne shell up to AIX version 3, but was changed to KornShell (ksh88) in version 4 for XPG4 and POSIX compliance. The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is AIX's default graphical user interface . As part of Linux Affinity and the free AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications (ATLA), open-source KDE Plasma Workspaces and GNOME desktop are also available. SMIT

1540-419: The announcement of the first POWER1 -based IBM RS/6000 models in 1990. AIX v3 innovated in several ways on the software side. It was the first operating system to introduce the idea of a journaling file system , JFS , which allowed for fast boot times by avoiding the need to ensure the consistency of the file systems on disks (see fsck ) on every reboot. Another innovation was shared libraries which avoid

1595-579: The appliance becomes easily deployable, and can be used without nearly as wide (or deep) IT knowledge. Additionally, when problems and errors appear, the supporting staff very rarely needs to explore them deeply to understand the matter thoroughly. The staff needs merely training on the appliance management software to be able to resolve most of problems. In all forms of the computer appliance model, customers benefit from easy operations. The appliance has exactly one combination of hardware and operating system and application software, which has been pre-installed at

1650-612: The approach of PureApplication a step further being essentially a tightly coupled and specialized computer appliance and software appliance , the latter supporting both Oracle and DB2 . It is thence marketed by the IBM Information Management Software , a brand of IBM Software Group (SWG) . PureData is focused at three main tasks within enterprise computing: business intelligence, near real-time data analysis and online transactional processing. It comes in four flavours: PureData System for Transactions

1705-509: The box". The basic intention is for the combination of integrated hardware and software that can be easily maintained. A similar concept had already been introduced with the IBM AS/400 . Today, such systems are called converged systems . More specialized integrated hardware and software are referred to as appliances . The compute nodes of the server blades can be x86 or Power ISA and they can be used either individually or mixed in

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1760-592: The distinction of being built on top of SNA, and thereby being fully compatible with DS on IBM mainframe systems and on midrange systems running OS/400 through IBM i . For the graphical user interfaces, AIX v2 came with the X10R3 and later the X10R4 and X11 versions of the X Window System from MIT, together with the Athena widget set . Compilers for Fortran and C were available. AIX PS/2 (also known as AIX/386 )

1815-525: The early 1970s at AT&T 's Bell Labs research center, running on DEC minicomputers . By 1976, the operating system was used in various academic institutions, including Princeton , where Tom Lyon and others ported it to the S/370 to run as a guest OS under VM/370 . This port later grew into UTS , a mainframe Unix offering from IBM's competitor Amdahl Corporation . IBM's involvement with Unix began in 1979 when it assisted Bell Labs in porting Unix to

1870-581: The factory. This prevents customers from needing to perform complex integration work, and dramatically simplifies troubleshooting. In fact, this "turnkey operation" characteristic is the driving benefit that customers seek when purchasing appliances. To be considered an appliance, the (hardware) device needs to be integrated with software, and both are supplied as a package. This distinguishes appliances from "home grown" solutions, or solutions requiring complex implementations by integrators or value-added resellers (VARs). The appliance approach helps to decouple

1925-595: The first commercial RISC chip. This was based on a design pioneered at IBM Research (the IBM 801 ). One of the novel aspects of the RT design was the use of a microkernel , called Virtual Resource Manager (VRM). The keyboard, mouse, display, disk drives and network were all controlled by a microkernel. One could "hotkey" from one operating system to the next using the Alt-Tab key combination. Each OS in turn would get possession of

1980-470: The front for compute nodes ("servers") and storage nodes. Additionally, there are bays in the rear for I/O modules. A flex-chassis can accommodate up to 14 horizontal compute and storage nodes in the front, and 4 vertically oriented switch modules in the rear. Contrasting to this, the IBM BladeCenter (9U high) has vertically oriented compute nodes ("blades"). This means that the components between

2035-507: The fully automatic and optimal orchestration of resources (e.g. workload balancing). PureApplication uses in conjunction with the IBM System Manager first Flex repeatable software patterns (pattern) and industry-specific processes, which are derived from the year-long collaboration of IBM with their customers and business partners. The basic building block of the system is the 10U high Flex Enterprise system chassis with 14 bays in

2090-424: The hardware resources of the computer (primarily memory, disk storage, processing power, and networking bandwidth) to meet the computing needs of the user. The main issue with the traditional model is related to complexity. It is complex to integrate the operating system and applications with a hardware platform, and complex to support it afterwards. By tightly constraining the variations of the hardware and software,

2145-623: The host operating system, and as a guest under VM . AIX/ESA, while technically advanced, had little commercial success, partially because UNIX functionality was added as an option to the existing mainframe operating system, MVS , as MVS/ESA SP Version 4 Release 3 OpenEdition in 1994, and continued as an integral part of MVS/ESA SP Version 5, OS/390 and z/OS, with the name eventually changing from OpenEdition to Unix System Services . IBM also provided OpenEdition in VM/ESA Version 2 through z/VM. As part of Project Monterey , IBM released

2200-504: The keyboard, mouse and display. Besides AIX v2, the PICK OS also included this microkernel. Much of the AIX v2 kernel was written in the PL.8 programming language, which proved troublesome during the migration to AIX v3. AIX v2 included full TCP/IP networking, as well as SNA and two networking file systems: NFS , licensed from Sun Microsystems , and Distributed Services (DS). DS had

2255-567: The need for an appliance to have easy installation, configuration, and operation, with little or no technical knowledge being necessary. The world of industrial automation has been rich in appliances. These appliances have been hardened to withstand temperature and vibration extremes. These appliances are also highly configurable, enabling customization to meet a wide variety of applications. The key benefits of an appliance in automation are: Types of automation appliances: There are several design patterns adopted by computer appliance vendors,

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2310-421: The need for static linking from an application to the libraries it used. The resulting smaller binaries used less of the hardware RAM to run, and used less disk space to install. Besides improving performance, it was a boon to developers: executable binaries could be in the tens of kilobytes instead of a megabyte for an executable statically linked to the C library . AIX v3 also scrapped the microkernel of AIX v2,

2365-498: The same program, though smitty invokes the text-based version, while smit will invoke an X Window System based interface if possible; however, if smit determines that X Window System capabilities are not present, it will present the text-based version instead of failing. Determination of X Window System capabilities is typically performed by checking for the existence of the DISPLAY variable. Object Data Manager ( ODM )

2420-657: The same rack simultaneously, thus offering a hybrid ensemble which borrows from the zEnterprise / zBX ensemble (cf. a gameframe ), including its ability to manage a combined physical/virtual hybrid environment from a single console. PureSystems is shipped with the IBM Flex System Manager . It is an appliance which manages the resources according to the so-called "Patterns of Expertise", which provide field engineers' expertise from decades of system configuration. These "Patterns of Expertise" offer industry-specific (e.g. banking, insurance, automotive) defaults for

2475-412: The software and the underlying operating system , or to flexibly reconfigure the hardware. Another form of appliance is the virtual appliance , which has similar functionality to a dedicated hardware appliance, but is distributed as a software virtual machine image for a hypervisor -equipped device. Traditionally, software applications run on top of a general-purpose operating system , which uses

2530-585: The standard OS for the Apple Network Server line by Apple Computer . In the late 1990s, under Project Monterey , IBM and the Santa Cruz Operation attempted to integrate AIX and UnixWare into a multiplatform Unix for Intel IA-64 architecture. The project was discontinued in 2002 after limited commercial success. In 2003, the SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM, alleging misappropriation of UNIX System V source code in AIX. The case

2585-404: The various systems and applications, for example in the data center. Once a resource is decoupled, in theory it can be also centralized to become shared among many systems, centrally managed and optimized, all without requiring changes to any other system. The major disadvantage of deploying a computer appliance is that since they are designed to supply a specific resource, they most often include

2640-498: Was IBM's fourth attempt to offer Unix-like functionality for their mainframe line, specifically the System/370 (the prior versions were a TSS/370 -based Unix system developed jointly with AT&T c.1980, a VM/370 -based system named VM/IX developed jointly with Interactive Systems Corporation c.1984, and a VM/370 -based version of TSS/370 named IX/370 which was upgraded to be compatible with UNIX System V ). AIX/370

2695-547: Was developed by Locus Computing Corporation under contract to IBM. AIX PS/2, first released in October 1988, ran on IBM PS/2 personal computers with Intel 386 and compatible processors. The product was announced in September 1988 with a baseline tag price of $ 595, although some utilities, such as UUCP , were included in a separate Extension package priced at $ 250. nroff and troff for AIX were also sold separately in

2750-575: Was developed for the IBM RT PC workstation by IBM in conjunction with Interactive Systems Corporation , who had previously ported UNIX System III to the IBM PC for IBM as PC/IX . According to its developers, the AIX source (for this initial version) consisted of one million lines of code. Installation media consisted of eight 1.2M floppy disks . The RT was based on the IBM ROMP microprocessor ,

2805-540: Was not a General Availability product. It was replaced in 1985 by IBM IX/370, a fully supported product based on AT&T's Unix/360 6th Edition, later updated to Unix System V. In 1986, IBM introduced AIX Version 1 for the IBM RT PC workstation. It was based on UNIX System V Releases 1 and 2, incorporating source code from 4.2 and 4.3 BSD UNIX. AIX Version 2 followed in 1987 for the RT PC. In 1990, AIX Version 3

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2860-515: Was released for the POWER -based RS/6000 platform. It became the primary operating system for the RS/6000 series, which was later renamed IBM eServer pSeries , IBM System p , and finally IBM Power Systems . AIX Version 4, introduced in 1994, added symmetric multiprocessing and evolved through the 1990s, culminating with AIX 4.3.3 in 1999. A modified version of Version 4.1 was also used as

2915-524: Was released in 1990 with functional equivalence to System V Release 2 and 4.3BSD as well as IBM enhancements. With the introduction of the ESA/390 architecture, AIX/370 was replaced by AIX/ESA in 1991, which was based on OSF/1 , and also ran on the System/390 platform. This development effort was made partly to allow IBM to compete with Amdahl UTS . Unlike AIX/370, AIX/ESA ran both natively as

2970-536: Was resolved in 2010 when a jury ruled that Novell owned the rights to Unix, not SCO. AIX 6 was announced in May 2007 and became generally available on November 9, 2007. Key features included role-based access control , workload partitions , and Live Partition Mobility . AIX 7.1 was released in September 2010 with enhancements such as Cluster Aware AIX and support for large-scale memory and real-time application requirements. The original AIX (sometimes called AIX/RT )

3025-509: Was sold separately for another $ 250. IBM also offered a $ 150 AIX PS/2 DOS Server Program, which provided file server and print server services for client computers running PC DOS 3.3. The last version of PS/2 AIX is 1.3. It was released in 1992 and announced to add support for non-IBM (non-microchannel) computers as well. Support for PS/2 AIX ended in March 1995. In 1988, IBM announced AIX/370 , also developed by Locus Computing. AIX/370

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