In de unix-hoek zijn verschillende smaken leverbaar zoals Solaris, HP/UX, de BSD-tak en AIX. Deze laatste wordt ontwikkeld door IBM en richt zich tegenwoordig op de Power en PowerPC risc-processor machines die het levert aan zijn klanten. IBM heeft enkele dagen geleden een nieuwe versie uitgebracht met 7.1 als het versienummer, dit is tevens de eerste publieke uitgave van de 7-tak. De beknopte omschrijving van deze uitgave ziet er als volgt uit:
IBM is offering the next version of the AIX operating system, AIX 7, and new releases of PowerVM and PowerHA™ SystemMirror for AIX. These new offerings are designed to help companies reduce cost, improve service, and lower the risk of deploying and migrating applications to AIX on Power Systems.
The new capabilities planned for AIX 7 are designed to expand the scalability, reliability, and manageability of the AIX operating system and the applications running on the AIX operating system. Key features will provide greater vertical scalability of up to 1,024 threads or 256 cores in a single partition, and a clustering infrastructure designed to provide highly availability applications with PowerHA SystemMirror and to simplify management of scale-out workloads. In addition, AIX 7 will include new management capabilities based on IBM Systems Director that are designed to simplify the management of AIX system configuration. Finally, AIX 7 will support the ability to run AIX V5.2 inside of a workload partition to allow consolidation of old workloads on new systems. This capability will require an additional product, AIX 5.2 Workload Partitions for AIX 7.
AIX 7 is supported on Power System servers based on PPC970, POWER4, POWER5, POWER6, and POWER7 processors. AIX 7 includes exploitation that takes full advantage of POWER7 processor-based servers.
AIX 7, like AIX 6, is planned to provide binary compatibility for application programs developed on previous versions of AIX as long as the programs comply with reasonable programming standards.
AIX 7 continues the evolution of UNIX that began more than 25 years ago with the release of AIX V2.1 and builds on the earlier generations of AIX in a nondisruptive evolutionary approach.
AIX 7, with the planned new releases of PowerVM and PowerHA SystemMirror, is designed to deliver the intelligent, interconnected information technology infrastructure needed for a smarter planet.
Base operating system and integration:Hardware enablement and support:
- Virtualization
- AIX 5.2 Workload Partitions for AIX 7
- Support for export of fibre channel adapters to WPARs
- VIOS disk support in a WPAR
- Trusted kernel extension loading and config from WPAR
- AIX Performance tool topas enhancements for Active Memory Expansion
- Operating system and integration
- AIX 7 is designed to comply with Open Group Single UNIX Specification Version 4
- ksh93 enhancements
- DWARF debugging support
- User Direct Access Programming Library V1.2
Performance and scalability:
- Shared Memory Interface to Barrier Synchronous Register
- CPU interrupt disablement
- AIX kernel memory pinning
- Logical Volume Manager enhanced support for solid-state disks
- Documented kernel sockets API
- xntp Version 4.2.1 support in AIX
- EtherChannel enhancement
- RNIC Support
AIX security:
- 1024-way scalability
- AIX terabyte segment support
- Cluster Aware Perfstat Library Interfaces
- Firewall support for clients that use Performance AIDE
- Performance Aide and Topas recording capability changes
Manageability:
- Domains support in Role Based Access Control
- Enable hardware acceleration support for Encrypted File Systems, IPSec, and Trusted Execution
- ProPolice, AIX enablement for new XLC compiler V11
- ODM directory permission changes and general security update
- Maximum number of groups increased
- AIX 7 designed to comply with Common Criteria CAPP/EAL4+ Security Certification
- IBM Compliance Expert Express Edition
Reliability, availability, and serviceability:
- AIX Profile Manager
- AIX Event Infrastructure
- Network Installation Manager (NIM) Thin Server support
- Distributed Systems Management
- System Management Console Support
Globalization:
- Cluster Aware AIX
- User keys enhancement
- Multi-node First Failure Data Capture
- Firmware-assisted dump
- Enhanced probevue functionality
- Unicode 5.2 support
- Alias code set name support
