Welcome to the TSG Consulting Blog

Welcome to the New TSG Consulting Blog. TSG Consulting is an infrastructure based consulting company with highly skilled consultants, who are also IBM Certified Instructors. This unique combination of skills exposes us to features in operating systems, bugs, and fixes, that most administrators do not get an opportunity to see. What you can expect to see from our blog is:

  • Info on new features in hardware and operating systems that we think are worth sharing.
  • Bugs we encounter, that are not documented elsewhere on the internet at the time of posting.
  • Hints and Tips that just might make your life easier.

If you have suggestions for a blog topic, please feel free to contact us at info@tsgci.com


AIX V7 and Solid State Disks

November 11th, 2010

One of the new LVM enhancements in AIX V7 and AIX 6.1-006 is the use of Solid State Disks (SSD).  This is a most welcome enhancement.  This is particularly wonderful for those extremely busy databases. A single SDD runs around 14,000 to 29,000 IOPS.  Compare that to a traditional hard drive, which gets about 175 IOPS.

Some considerations when working with SDDs.  First of all, they are small compared to HDDs, 69 GB of space.  The second big consideration is a Volume Group will perform read/writes at the speed of the slowest disk.  So while you can inter-mix HDD and SDD, it is not a good idea.  LVM has an enhancement, where you can specify that a VG is SDD only.  That will help keep you safe from yourself, or that person in the cube next to you.  The last consideration is, as you probably guessed, they are EXPEN$IVE, about $10K right now.

If you need some assistance configuring your system, moving data to SDD VGs, or need some AIX assistance, please give us a call!

Posted in AIX and Power Systems | No Comments »


IBM Power 6 IVE and LHEA

September 28th, 2009

One of the new features on the IBM P6 systems is an Integrated Virtual Ethernet adapter. It is actually a pretty cool addition to the system, significantly decreasing the amount of real Ethernet Adapters required.

This network device talks directly to the LPARs, reducing the load on Hypervisor and removing potential software forwarder bottle necks. So why is it not being used? I think a good part of it is training.  I taught the Power4 LPAR Class, there were not significant changes when the  Power5 LPAR class came around. The major changes could have been handled in under a day. Now, with the Power6 class, I feel many of you do not want to do another 5 day class to learn the new features of the Power6. The IVE does change slightly the way we configure LPARs. When you get down to the nuts and the bolts of it, it would take about 1-2 hours of training, and the admins would have it.

If you are interested in using this piece of hardware that is basically sitting idle in over 90% of customer installed systems, please contact us at info@tsgci.com, we would be happy to help out.

Posted in AIX and Power Systems | No Comments »