This 2.5 day workshop course is designed to provide continuing education for system administrators who have extensive experience with previous levels of POWER hardware, PowerVM, and AIX. It covers various enhancements to POWER hardware and firmware, VIOS, PowerVC, PowerKVM, and to the AIX operating system. It starts with an overview of POWER8 architecture, features, and POWER8 family. It then proceeds with discussions on various software and firmware enhancements (including PowerVC 1.2.2, VIOS 2.2.3.4 and AIX 7.1 TL3). These enhancements include eight thread SMT, simplified SEA configuration, SR-IOV support, VIOS support for E870 and E880 and other enhancements. This is accomplished by discussing the enhancements in each of these followed by hands-on labs, which provide additional exposure to the new environment.

For a lecture-only course that includes current POWER8 and AIX7 enhancements, attend POWER8 and AIX Enhancements (AN101). There can be significant overlap in discussion content between AN101 and POWER8 Systems and AIX Differences Workshop (AN102), depending upon where these courses are in their update cycles; read the course descriptions carefully. To learn only the very latest enhancements, attendance at IBM Technical conferences or symposiums is recommended.

This advanced course is for anyone responsible for system administrative duties including implementing and managing IBM POWER7+ or POWER8 servers running AIX 7.1.