Duration 5 Days – 35 hrs.
Overview
This course provides participants with the essential knowledge and practical skills required to administer IBM AIX environments running on IBM Power Systems. It covers everyday system administration activities, including system installation and configuration, storage and file-system management, user administration, security, networking, software maintenance, backup and recovery, workload monitoring, and basic troubleshooting.
Hands-on exercises reinforce the use of AIX commands, the System Management Interface Tool (SMIT), and standard administrative utilities.
Objectives
- Explain the architecture and major components of IBM Power Systems and AIX.
- Navigate the AIX operating environment and use essential administrative commands.
- Use SMIT and command-line tools to manage AIX systems.
- Manage users, groups, permissions, and basic security settings.
- Configure and manage disks, volume groups, logical volumes, and file systems.
- Install, update, verify, and remove AIX software.
- Configure basic TCP/IP networking and network services.
- Manage system processes, services, devices, and scheduled jobs.
- Perform system backups and basic recovery procedures.
- Monitor system resources and identify common performance issues.
- Analyze logs and apply structured troubleshooting techniques.
- Perform routine preventive maintenance and administration tasks.
Target Audience
- New or aspiring AIX system administrators
- UNIX or Linux administrators transitioning to AIX
- IBM Power Systems support personnel
- Infrastructure and operations engineers
- Technical support specialists
- Database and application administrators who support AIX-based systems
- IT professionals responsible for maintaining enterprise UNIX environments
Prerequisites
- Basic knowledge of computer hardware, operating systems, and networking
- Familiarity with command-line environments
- Basic UNIX or Linux knowledge, although prior AIX experience is not required
- An understanding of files, directories, permissions, processes, and TCP/IP concepts
Course Outline
Day 1: IBM Power Systems and AIX Fundamentals
Module 1: Introduction to IBM Power Systems
- IBM Power Systems overview
- IBM Power server architecture and components
- POWER processor technology
- Physical and virtual system concepts
- Introduction to logical partitions
- Role of the Hardware Management Console
- Overview of PowerVM and virtualization
- AIX system administration roles and responsibilities
Module 2: AIX Operating-System Fundamentals
- AIX architecture and major components
- AIX system startup and shutdown concepts
- Multiuser and maintenance modes
- AIX directory structure
- File types and naming conventions
- Command syntax, flags, and arguments
- Using online documentation and manual pages
- Navigating the AIX command-line environment
Module 3: AIX System-Management Tools
- Introduction to SMIT
- Using graphical and ASCII SMIT
- SMIT fast paths
- Managing systems through command-line utilities
- Object Data Manager overview
- System configuration files and repositories
- Identifying system hardware and configuration
- Gathering basic system information
Day 2: User, Process, Device and Software Administration
Module 4: User and Group Administration
- User and group management concepts
- Creating, modifying, locking, and removing user accounts
- Managing user attributes and environments
- Password and authentication settings
- User profiles and initialization files
- File ownership and permissions
- Special permission modes
- Access-control lists overview
- Administrative roles and privilege considerations
Module 5: Process and Service Management
- Understanding AIX processes
- Viewing and monitoring active processes
- Starting, stopping, and terminating processes
- Process priorities and resource use
- Background and foreground processing
- Managing subsystems using the System Resource Controller
- Scheduling tasks with cron and at
- Managing startup services
- Introduction to workload-management concepts
Module 6: Device and Software Management
- AIX device-management concepts
- Configured and defined device states
- Viewing and configuring devices
- Device attributes and special files
- Software packaging concepts
- Filesets, bundles, and installation media
- Installing, updating, verifying, committing, and rejecting software
- Managing fixes and service updates
- Introduction to AIX service strategies
Day 3: Storage and File-System Administration
Module 7: Logical Volume Manager Fundamentals
- AIX disk and storage terminology
- Physical volumes and physical partitions
- Volume groups
- Logical volumes and logical partitions
- Logical Volume Manager architecture
- Creating and extending volume groups
- Creating and modifying logical volumes
- Mirroring concepts
- Storage allocation policies
- Viewing and validating storage configuration
Module 8: File-System Management
- AIX file-system concepts
- Journaled File System and Enhanced Journaled File System
- Creating, mounting, unmounting, and removing file systems
- Extending file systems
- Managing mount points
- Automatic mounting
- Monitoring capacity and inode consumption
- File-system permissions and ownership
- File-system consistency and repair
- Paging-space administration
- Basic disk-failure considerations
Day 4: Networking, Security, Backup and Recovery
Module 9: TCP/IP Network Administration
- AIX TCP/IP architecture
- Network interfaces and adapters
- Configuring IP addresses, subnet masks, and gateways
- Hostname and name-resolution configuration
- Routing concepts and routing-table management
- Testing network connectivity
- Common network services
- Network configuration files
- Basic network troubleshooting commands
- Introduction to Network File System administration
Module 10: AIX Security Administration
- AIX security architecture
- Password and account-security policies
- Authentication and authorization concepts
- File and directory security
- Managing administrative access
- Secure remote connectivity
- Reviewing login and security records
- Auditing overview
- Security hardening considerations
- Basic role-based access-control concepts
Module 11: Backup and Recovery
- Developing an AIX backup strategy
- File-level backups
- Using common AIX backup and restore utilities
- Creating system backups using mksysb
- Volume-group backups using savevg
- Restoring files and system data
- Backup verification
- Introduction to system recovery procedures
- Basic alternate-disk and disaster-recovery concepts
Day 5: Monitoring, Troubleshooting and Routine Maintenance
Module 12: System Monitoring and Performance Fundamentals
- Key AIX performance areas
- Monitoring CPU, memory, disk, and network usage
- Understanding paging and memory utilisation
- Identifying resource bottlenecks
- Using standard monitoring commands and utilities
- Reviewing historical performance information
- Disk and file-system utilisation monitoring
- Basic performance-tuning considerations
- Establishing a system-performance baseline
Module 13: AIX Problem Determination
- Structured troubleshooting methodology
- AIX error-logging facilities
- Viewing and interpreting the error report
- System and application log files
- Diagnosing process and service issues
- Troubleshooting storage and file-system problems
- Troubleshooting network connectivity
- Collecting system diagnostic information
- Introduction to system dump concepts
- Escalating incidents and documenting findings
Module 14: Routine Administration and Practical Exercise
- Daily, weekly, and monthly administrative checks
- Monitoring file-system capacity
- Reviewing failed login attempts and system errors
- Checking backup completion and integrity
- Reviewing software and security-maintenance requirements
- Maintaining system-administration records
- End-to-end AIX administration laboratory
- Course review and knowledge assessment
Practical Exercises
Suggested hands-on activities include:
- Navigating AIX and retrieving system information
- Managing users, groups, passwords, and permissions
- Controlling processes and AIX subsystems
- Configuring disks, volume groups, logical volumes, and file systems
- Installing and verifying AIX software
- Configuring basic TCP/IP networking
- Creating and validating backup operations
- Monitoring system resources
- Diagnosing simulated system, storage, and network issues
