AIX Administration Part 2 - Advanced Skills & Techniques

Objectives
On successful completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

• use and query the ODM
• understand the boot process in depth
• identify and resolve boot problems
• boot from external media to recover a system that cannot boot
• compare and contrast ODM LVM data vs VGDA,LVCB data
• explain why quorum is used, and disable it when required
• mirror VGs and LVs
• replace faulty disks and restore the data on them
• trace hardware and software problems with syslogd and errdemon
• create your own error login
• create and use dump devices
• perform basic performance analysis.

Who Should Attend
AIX Systems Administrators.
Prerequisites
A working knowledge of using and administering AIX. This can be achieved through on the job experience, or by attending the course AIX Administration - Part 1 - Foundation Skills.
Duration
4 days

Course Code
AXA2
Contents
Administration recap
Using lspv, lsvg, lslv to gather LVM information; using lsdev and lsattr to gather hardware information; understanding your system configuration.


Coping with the ODM
Why the ODM?; ODM internals; querying the ODM hardware and software databases; changing the ODM.


The Boot process
From power on to logon; the contents of the BLV; the 3 stages of rc.boot. /etc/inittab; boot messages.


Resolving boot problems
Reading LED/HMC error codes; is it hardware or software; how to boot from CD/NIM; rebuilding the blv; rebuilding filesystems; editing configuration files from CD.


The LVM in detail
Importing and exporting volume groups; where LVM data is kept; using exportvg and importvg to rebuild corrupt LVM data; how quorum works; mirroring rootvg.


Replacing disks and recovering data
Failing disks vs failed disk; recreating mirrored disks; recreating failed disks; recreating failed volume groups.


More on saving and restoring VGS
Recap on mksysb; understanding /image.data and /bosinst.data; shrinking PPs and jfs filesystems; cloning and alternate rootvg disk installs.


Error Logging
Traditional syslog vs AIX errdemon; how to use both; the template database; proactive logging rather than reactive; using alog.


System monitoring
Using ps, sar, vmstat and iostat; . using svmon, filemon, tprof; system tuning methods; the scheduler; the memory manager; the I/O subsystem.