AIX 6.1 is the latest release of IBMs popular Unix operating system. There are a few major changes within the OS, and a lot of new features.

• Binary compatibility with AIX V5, 32 and 64 bit apps.
• AIX 6.1 Supports Power4, Power5, Power6, PowerPC 970 processors.
• AIX 6.1 will NOT have a 32 bit kernel, 64 bit only!
• Upgrade from AIX V4 or V5.
• Power6 features including Live Partition Mobility, Multiple Shared Processing Pools, and Application Storage Keys. These features are also available in AIX 5.3 with Power6.
• Workload Partitions. WPARs are similar to Solaris Containers. The main differences are that AIX supports both Application WPARs and System WPARs, and allowing for WPAR Mobility. Live WPARs can be migrated between systems. IMO, WPARs are much more useful than Solaris Containers, and a lot easier to figure out. The resource management within the WPARs is also user friendly and easy to figure out for the first time users. WPARs require AIX 6.1 only, does not require Power6.
• WPAR Manager. Web based WPAR management tool is smooth and easy to use. You can also manage WPARs via smith and CLI.
• Enhanced RBAC, complete re-write of existing RBAC architecture.
• Secure by Default install option. Install a minimal version of AIX. Sorta like a Gentoo live cd.
• Concurrent kernel updates
• Encrypted filesystems using JFS2
• Dynamic tracing via Probevue

More to come.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 and is filed under AIX 6.1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.