Hi all,

My company has bought a AIX 5.3 System. I would like to maintain the
server in a perfect status (I hope!!) So I would like that someone help
me to create a list of operations to perform every day for managing our
AIX? It is possible?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Alex

A well set-up AIX server doesn't need daily operations to maintain it -
it just sits there and works (as with most Unix/Linux systems).

Your tasks should fall into two categories : changing things and
dealing with problems.

Changing things : update AIX and apps with newer versions/fixes; manage
user accounts (create & delete as needed) and manage LVM (e.g.
expand/create filesystems). Potentially there are lots of other
things, but most are application dependent.

Dealing with problems : Have some way to monitor filesystem free space
(could be a daily manual check, a script or a sysadmin application) and
sort out filesystems that are filling up. You could also monitor some
other log files (e.g. error log, /var/adm/messages). Other problems
that crop up you can fix and then put in an automated check to spot
them in future.

Other than that, look for any general Unix admin guide on the web. The
commands might differ but the tasks will be pretty much the same.

A well set-up AIX server doesn't need daily operations to maintain it -
it just sits there and works (as with most Unix/Linux systems).

Your tasks should fall into two categories : changing things and
dealing with problems.

Changing things : update AIX and apps with newer versions/fixes; manage
user accounts (create & delete as needed) and manage LVM (e.g.
expand/create filesystems). Potentially there are lots of other
things, but most are application dependent.

Dealing with problems : Have some way to monitor filesystem free space
(could be a daily manual check, a script or a sysadmin application) and
sort out filesystems that are filling up. You could also monitor some
other log files (e.g. error log, /var/adm/messages). Other problems
that crop up you can fix and then put in an automated check to spot
them in future.

Other than that, look for any general Unix admin guide on the web. The
commands might differ but the tasks will be pretty much the same.

Iain
http://www.axiomtech.co.uk

Alessandro M Blasi wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> My company has bought a AIX 5.3 System. I would like to maintain the
> server in a perfect status (I hope!!) So I would like that someone help
> me to create a list of operations to perform every day for managing our
> AIX? It is possible?
>
> Thanks in advance for your help.
>
> Alex
>

There's not anything you need to do daily, but there are things you
should have the system do on it's own for you.

1. Document the system. Like others have said and will say again, make a
script that saves all the system information you can find and have it
run weekly - keep at least 4 weeks worth. If something changes or the
system gets hosed, you have a known good configuration you can use as
reference. Be liberal, save everything.

2. Subscribe to IBM's notification lists, you'll get emails about
security updates and new filesets:
https://techsupport.services.ibm.com...bscriptionSvcs

3. Also check for code updates on your own. Here are the sites you need
to monitor:
AIX, HMC, VIO, and other updates:
http://www-912.ibm.com/eserver/support/fixes

Firmware - system planar, disk drives, fibre channel adapters, ect:
https://techsupport.services.ibm.com.../download.html
(p5 planar firmware [Hypervisor] is at the very bottom)

4. Turn on SAR data collection. This will give you a lot of statistical
information about your system you can use to either fix, or if
necessary, defend your system when the application areas complain of
system slowness. To understand the output, read the man pages. The
performance commands are all documented very well.
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infoce...d/cpuperf1.htm
(Scroll down to the section "System activity accounting via cron daemon"
and do that)

You can do fancy things like feed your sar & other perf command output
into rrd graphs and output to websites which is nice for upper
management and general trend analysis.

5. Use RSCT & RMC (Resource Monitoring and Control). The WebSM front end
makes it about as easy as pointing & clicking to enable lots of system
monitoring & notification features in 5.3. One warning: the notification
shoots blank emails if /tmp is full, so you still have to write at least
1 monitoring script outside of RMC to cover yourself. (I just verified
this against AIX 5.3ML02 with IBM support 3 days ago, they where not
aware of this "feature").
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infoce...l5adm0511.html


Lastly, here is a good list of general AIX commands if you like:
http://www.unixguide.net/ibm/ibmcribsheet.shtml

Hope that's helpfull.

Thanks to all for your help! I will start "to try" your suggestions
today!!

Have a good day,

Alex.

Make sure you understand mksysb! This will save you in a pinch. All
of the suggestions are very well said.


Alessandro M Blasi wrote:
> Thanks to all for your help! I will start "to try" your suggestions
> today!!
>
> Have a good day,
>
> Alex.