I have worked on AIX for a number of years now and want to upskill to Sys Admin. My problem is my employer won't give root access etc to their servers so I must find my own way of training. Can anyone suggest a virtual environment I could use to train for AIX sys admin tasks, or suggest an old model IBM server that would be cheap to buy.

Thanks

Hi,

there is no virtual environment I am aware of that works with AIX these days ... but a nice 43p 150 or a B50 or B80 should be affordable these days - and is enough to teach you the very basic administration of AIX.

But knowing how to extend filesystems or delete a user on AIX doesn't make you a system administrator ... AIX is these days so highly virtualized that you will hardly be able to teach yourself all the skills required to work as a system administrator in a mid-to-large size company with current technology with external storage, clustering, TSM backups, Tivoli monitoring and all the fun stuff. So I would highly recommed to get some formal training in the more complex areas like virtualization before you go for a job as a system administrator.
In addition you should have a solid background of other areas in IT like networking, maybe some hardware- and shell scripting skills - and the ability to live for days without food or sleep in case of tough production issues... So if you want to have a life or any further commitments (wife, children, personal interests) - don't take a job in a smaller company - be aware that being a sysadmin is in many cases a 24/7/365 commitment, a permanent challenge - but the greates job you can get - I can promise you it will never be boring at all.
Kind regards
zxmaus

Oh, if only we could boot AIX on a Sony Playstation 3 :-)

Wonder if a business case could be made to convince IBM...

Thanks for that zxmaus

and I will look into your suggestions ... and I'm only too well aware that sysadmin is a 24/7 commitment as I've been doing that for the last 7 years, not as a sysadmin but as a system programmer on AIX.

Really do appreciate your thoughtful response

Thanks

It isn't a VM env....but I would recommend joining an aix user group near you.

great resource for new/old SAs.

Jackmeadow,

that prooves that you have at least all the soft skills you need for being a sysadmin - Now we have to work on the technical skills )

If you don't know it already, have a look here:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/systems/p...ix/AIX_Movies/

a bunch of very good tutorials on virtualization, hardware, vio and similar things.

You will probably know the redbooks already, so the only thing you can do now is get a cheap box and do it ...

Kind regards
zxmaus

Hi.. can you please provide me if any CBT for AIX or any videos on HACMP.
I am 7 months old in AIX admin so i need to learn HACMP at the earliest as my project demands me so.

Thank you in advance.