In this article, we explain what is the Primary IBM AIX SysAdmin Activities, this article will help you to clear the AIX System Admin Interview.
Monitoring Tools:
Nagios/Zabbix/Manual Bash Scripts which is automated for monitoring complete server. [ads2]
Manual check commands for IBM AIX:
- $ vmstat: Run queue, virtual memory statics, paging CPU
- $ iostat: monitor system input/output (I/O) devices (physical and logical) that are mounted.
- $ netstat: To monitor network statics

- $ ps: statistics and status information about processes
- $ nmon: show local system statistics in interactive mode and records system statistics in recording mode
- $ topas: shows pid, nice value, user, ppid, cmd, CPU use, memory use, time.
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IBM AIX Health Checkup:
- H/W Check – $ prtconf
- Display output with System info / Server info / N/W info / Paging Space / Memory / I/O.
- System Uptime – $uptime
- Shows when the system is started, update every 1, 5, 15 min intervals, and which users are login.
- Load Average
- Power Backup Failure [ads3]
IBM AIX Troubleshooting Steps:
Checking Tickets on Portal / on mails.
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- FileSystem Related like no space in “ /, var, usr, opt” FS, FS corrupt, FS creation, and mount.
- Disk related like extending disk in VG, extending LV, Assigning Luns for Database User, etc.
- Networking related activities like Network Slowdown, ether channel issue, etc…
- User and Group Administration tasks like password failure, user creation, password assigning [this activity can be done by sudo user/admin user (maximum time begin admin user)] or rarely via root user.
- Remote session Issues
- Check cron jobs executed successfully.
- Pseudo user credential activity (Optional)
- IBM Call log for H/W failure (Optional)
- Backup: Daily/Weekly/Monthly backups – (Incremental/Differential/Full backups)
- NFS and CIFS FileSystem mounting and creating
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IBM AIX Diagnostics Issue
- Disk Failure Issue (disk will start blinking with red light).
- Network Cabling Issue
Project Planning
- TL Upgrade (rarely done activity) – Planning & Implementation of Upgrade activity
- SP Upgrade (rarely done activity) – Planning & Implementation of Upgrade Activity
- Firmware or HMC upgrade(Optional)
- VIOS Upgrade.
- Memory and CPU Increase [ads3]
System Reboot Issue/System Crash (Call log to IBM)
This is the IBM AIX SysAdmin Activities and is prepared with commands and examples for the interview.
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