Power Systems for AIX III: Advanced Administration and Problem Determination

Course Overview

This course provides advanced AIX system administrator skills with a focus on availability and problem determination. It provides detailed knowledge of the ODM database where AIX maintains so much configuration information. It shows how to monitor for and deal with AIX problems. There is special focus on dealing with Logical Volume Manager problems, including procedures for replacing disks. Several techniques for minimizing the system maintenance window are covered. It also covers how to migrate AIX Workload Partitions to another system with minimal disruption. While the course includes some AIX 6.1 enhancements, most of the material is applicable to prior releases of AIX.

There is also an instructor-led online version of this course: Power Systems for AIX III: AdvancedAdministration and Problem Determination (ILO) (AX150)If you are enrolling in a Self Paced Virtual Classroom or Web Based Training course, before you enroll, pleasereview the Self-Paced Virtual Classes and Web-Based Training Classes on our Terms and Conditions page,as well as the system requirements, to ensure that your system meets the minimum requirements for thiscourse.

Target Audience

This is an advanced course for AIX system administrators, system support, and contract support individuals with at least six months of experience in AIX.

Course Objectives

• Perform system problem determination and reporting procedures including analyzing error logs, creating dumps of the system, and providing needed data to the AIX Support personnel
• Examine and manipulate Object Data Manager databases
• Identify and resolve conflicts between the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) disk structures and the Object Data Manager (ODM)
• Complete a very basic configuration of Network Installation Manager to provide network boot support for either system installation or booting to maintenance mode
• Identify various types of boot and disk failures and perform the matching recovery procedures
• Implement advanced methods such as alternate disk install, multibos, and JFS2 snapshots to use a smaller maintenance window

Course Content

Day 1

• Unit 1 - Advanced AIX administration overview
• Exercise 1
• Unit 2 - The Object Data Manager
• Exercise 2
• Unit 3 - Error monitoring
• Exercise 3

Day 2

• Unit 4 - Network Installation Manager basics
• Exercise 4
• Unit 5 - System initialization: Part I
• Exercise 5

Day 3

• Unit 6 - System initialization: Part II
• Exercise 6
• Unit 7 - Disk management theory
• Exercise 7
• Unit 8 - Disk management procedures
• Exercise 8

Day 4

• Unit 8 continued
• Exercise 8 continued
• Unit 9 - Install and backup techniques
• Exercise 9
• Unit 10 - Workload partitions
• Exercise 10

Day 5

• Exercise 10 continued
• Unit 11 - The AIX system dump facility
• Exercise 11 - System dump facility

Course Prerequisites

You should be able to:

• Use the Hardware Management Console (HMC) to activate a logical partition running AIX and to access the AIX system console
• Install the AIX operating system from a NIM server
• Implement AIX backup and recovery
• Manage additional software and base operating system updates
• Use management tools such as SMIT
• Understand how to manage file systems, logical volumes, and volume groups
• Master the UNIX user interface including use of the vi editor, command execution, input and outputredirection, and the use of utilities such as grepThese skills may be obtained by enrolling in:
• Power Systems for AIX II: AIX Implementation and Administration (AN120) or Power Systems for AIX II:AIX Implementation and Administration (ILO) (AX120)If you have AIX system administration skills, but are not familiar with the LPAR environment, you may obtainthose skills by enrolling in:
• Power Systems for AIX I: LPAR Configuration and Planning (AN110) or Power Systems for AIX I: LPARConfiguration and Planning (ILO) (AX110)