TrustRadius Insights for IBM AIX are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Efficient Patching Process: Users have noted IBM AIX's capability to apply new patches seamlessly, eliminating the need for system restarts and enhancing operational efficiency significantly. This feature allows businesses to maintain continuous operations without disruptions, leading to increased productivity and cost savings.
Innovative Features: Customers appreciate IBM AIX for pioneering the journaling file system and offering advanced software features, showcasing its innovative nature and technological advancements in the industry. The introduction of these cutting-edge technologies sets IBM AIX apart from other operating systems, providing users with enhanced performance and functionality.
Stability and Reliability: Reviewers consistently praise IBM AIX for its exceptional stability, with systems running continuously without necessitating reboots, underscoring the high reliability and robustness of this operating system. The reliable performance of IBM AIX instills confidence in users, allowing them to focus on their tasks without worrying about system failures or downtime.
We do use the IBM AIX Operating system to divide the memory and CPU between various jobs and provide support to the customers. This powerful UNIX OS continues to provide game-changing features such as AIX Live Update, which allows you to apply new IBM AIX OS levels without a system restart and will have more efficient performance to the customers.
Pros
The newer version of IBM AIX allows to apply new patches without system restart
IBM AIX was the first operating system to have a journaling file system and have enhanced software features.
IBM AIX will have good vendor support 24/7 and will ensure reliability to the customers and more performance when compared to it peers.
Cons
IBM AIX will not support in cloud environment, it should start with support of cloud.
The cost is expensive when compared to it peers.
IBM AIX has preferred licenses
IBM AIX doesn't have GUI feature enabled by default.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM AIX is well suited for environments for most critical and which needs most secure features especially banking & Health care industries prefer to have IBM AIX OS servers in their environments. IBM AIX is most often used by companies as it has good support from the vendor 24/7 and for smooth operations.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)
In my organization, most of the databases and critical applications are running on IBM AIX due to numerous reasons like error handling. One of its most important features helps a lot with downtime, as well as the quick allocation of necessary resources and deallocation in case of release.
Pros
Centralized management
Easy to patch with an alternative disk
Easy to analyze errors
Cons
An opensource file set customization should be made
Yum creation should allow for checking updates on a regular basis
Snapshot options to add by default for the profile itself
Likelihood to Recommend
I recommend IBM AIX for wherever you feel like you have critical applications and databases. On the other hand, if you have a datacentre with DR due to heavy criticality then go with a very stable one. IBM AIX is best suited to make your business highly available.
IBM AIX is used by the entire organization. We run propriety processing apps in production, mostly legacy software.
Pros
It is extremely reliable
Feature rich, fully fledged *IX system
Delivers good performance on IBM POWER
Cons
Management of the virtualization, especially using IVM can be clunky
Likelihood to Recommend
*IX based applications that require excellent uptime. The hardware servers/clusters AIX is typically deployed on are very robust with a lot of redundancy built is and allowing many interventions done concurrently, without downtime.
VU
Verified User
Professional in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
We currently use IBM AIX as the compute power behind our main legacy ERP system, D3. AIX provides a very stable platform for D3 and allows hundreds of internal customers to connect to our centralized software without batting an eye.
Pros
IBM AIX is a very stable server product, and I can't recall a time when the server has crashed due to a hardware fault.
If you have legacy software that can't run on the new-fangled Linux flavors, AIX might be the way to go.
AIX has a host of built-in management tools that makes system configuration easy for a novice.
Cons
A lot of the built-in commands have not been updated in years. If you're used to some fancy CLI options in Linux, you may be out of luck with AIX.
Out of the box, you cannot run open-source Linux utilities on AIX. There is a toolbox you can install, however, it's not the same versions as you would get in different Linux flavors.
Tab completion for files and Up arrow to re-run previous commands don't work out of the box without running a Korn shell. A small annoyance, but one that catches me every time!
Likelihood to Recommend
If you need to run legacy software that is specifically written for AIX, then the server is great. The hardware is also solid and a lot of thought has gone into making it a robust and stable system. Otherwise, my default choice would be to just stick with Linux.
IBM AIX has been used to support the core, enterprise systems here at Tucson Medical Center for more than 14 years. AIX runs our mission-critical applications such as Epic Electronic medical record, Sunquest Lab, Oracle databases, Intersystems Cache Databases, and PeopleSoft. These systems support the enterprise at both the departmental and enterprise levels.
Pros
Stability. In the 14 years that I have used the product, I cannot think of a single time that we had an OS level failure. It is rock solid. We have had systems that have been booted and run for literally years without interruption.
Virtualization. We run IBM AIX as LPARS on Power infrastructure. All of our AIX infrastructure is virtualized making it easy to scale as needed.
Their logical volume manager makes the task of managing storage very simple. It is feature complete and they have mitigated much of the complexity that usually is inherent in LVM implementations.
I have a love/hate relationship with Smit. It is their administrative interface. It is very powerful and very complete which is why I marked it as a pro. It is also a bit clunky and somewhat arcane in its interface but still usable.
Cons
Staying current with open source software such as MySQL, Apache, Python, Perl, PHP, etc. These packages are usually only available from third parties and are often very out dated and difficult to implement.
Software maintenance is cryptic, difficult to manage, and fragmented. There are Service packs, Technical Levels, APARS, RPM updates, CPAN updates, and each has its own way of being managed and applied.
IBM AIX could be more security conscious. By default, insecure protocols such as Telnet and FTP are enabled and are the expected interface.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM AIX is a very powerful and extremely stable operating environment. It is well suited for applications that are business critical and cannot tolerate outages. It is best used to address large enterprise level application needs where stability and scalability are of paramount importance. IBM AIX is less useful for small enterprises.
AIX currently runs critical ERP systems across the organization. The stability, ease of use and robustness of the platform allows us to focus on the applications and worry less about the implementation and uptime concerns.
Pros
Performance Management
Volume and Filesystem management
Ease of Use
Backup and Recovery
Cons
Bringing new features online
Configuration Management
Difference enough from Linux to create concerns
Likelihood to Recommend
[Well suited for] Any application that can benefit from higher uptimes, online management and a robust platform (Power systems). It is less appropriate for platforms where cost is a key concern and the architects are ok with limited uptime and failures can be routed around.
VU
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
AIX is very stable, We have had systems running for years without rebooting
AIX is secure
AIX is easy to manage
Cons
There is no real GUI interface which some people could see as a drawback
AIX can be expensive
Likelihood to Recommend
For mission critical apps that need to stay running. Also for apps that require high performance. It would be less appropriate for small apps that don't need high performance or availability.
IBM AIX is used on hardware supporting both database and middleware and applications. It is used across the enterprise, supporting applications generally provided by IBM such as Websphere. Used by all business segments, its usage has decreased over the years as we drive to use more open source options. It is very powerful but quite expensive.
Pros
Very high performance; handles load very well
Very stable, not a lot of OS issues with this system
Solid vendor support
Cons
Very Expensive
Doesn't always handle non-IBM offerings very well
Seems to be shrinking, as we find it difficult to find AIX resources
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM is very well suited running DB2 and Websphere, as well as other IBM offered products. The sweet spot is when you get a complete IBM stack.
The counter to that is we have found running Oracle on it to be difficult. It also is limited because of the wide range of Windows-based apps that are not candidates to run on the system. The introduction of open source offerings into our environment makes it a less optimal offering.
VU
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
