This non-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 and to the AIX operating system. It starts with an overview of POWER8 architecture and equipment. It then proceeds with discussions on various software and firmware enhancements (including HMC V8R8.3.0, VIOS 2.2.3.50, PowerVC 1.2.3, and AIX 7.1 TL3). These enhancements include the HMC Enhanced+ graphical interface, simplified SEA configuration, SR-IOV support, VIOS software maintenance changes, and other enhancements.

For a workshop course with hands-on lab exercises, attend AN102G: POWER8 and AIX Enhancements Workshop. The workshop course will often lag behind AN101G in receiving the latest updates, but has the advantage of hands-on exercises. There can be significant overlap in discussion content between AN101G and AN102G, 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.

• Discuss the POWER8 hardware and its features
• Discuss and use the HMC Enhanced+ graphical interface
• Discuss PowerVM enhancements
• Discuss SR-IOV
• Discuss PowerVP features
• Discuss PowerVC enhancements

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

You must have basic AIX, LPAR, and PowerVM system administration experience. The AIX prerequisite can be met by attending one of the following classes or you can have equivalent AIX skills:

• Power Systems for AIX II: AIX Implementation and Administration (AN12G)
• AIX Jumpstart for UNIX Professionals (AN14G)

The LPAR and PowerVM prerequisite can be met by attending the following class or you can have equivalent LPAR skills.

• Power Systems for AIX - Virtualization I: Implementing Virtualization (AN30G)

Unit 1 - What’s new in Power Systems hardware

Unit 2 - Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)

Unit 3 - PowerVM and HMC Enhancements

Unit 4 - HMC Enhanced+ graphical interface

Unit 5 - Miscellaneous AIX, VIOS, and other software enhancements