Cisco NX-OS is a network operating system presented as a solution to help network operations move at the speed of business, with comprehensive automation, extensive visibility, and flexible open architectures for data center networks. NX-OS is the network operating system for all fabric architectures, from traditional L2/L3 to overlay-based fabrics.Cisco NX-OS powers the modern data center.
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IBM AIX
Score 9.1 out of 10
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IBM AIX (for Advanced Interactive eXecutive) is a Unix operating system, developed, offered and supported by IBM.
This easy solution can be a great help for the big companies on easy multiple data processing and effective networking solutions for the various departments and also generating the real-time data reports with Cisco NX-OS is excellent. For the new users, it takes no time to become a pro on full manipulation of the features and offer the best and quality management services.
IBM AIX is well suited for mission-critical applications, especially the ones that need to run on well-performing hardware and need less downtime. It is also perfect for applications that need a lot of CPU, because AIX scales well on the IBM POWER hardware, so adding additional CPU almost always generates higher performance/throughput. IBM AIX runs unmodified from the smallest IBM POWER machine (S1022, with 12 Power10 cores) to the biggest machine (E1080, with 240 Power10 cores). Because IBM POWER systems have very fast CPU’s, you typically need a lower number of CPU’s when compared to alternatives. This may bring a reduction in cost for software licensed per core. Unfortunately, not all software vendors port their software to IBM AIX, so sometimes you may have to run Linux on POWER, or skip the POWER platform altogether. But many vendors happily support AIX and POWER.
I think one feature it does really well is the virtual port channel feature. We have a lot of switches around the place that don't necessarily do port channeling really well. The Nexus platform comes in using the VPC feature, we're able to have multiple servers and then user devices connected, which gives us a lot better resiliency and scalability. Availability, it's easy to use, easy to maintain. Downtime is almost minimal. I think without a particular feature we would be stuck, so it's very good.
Stability. In the 14 years that I have used the product, I cannot think of a single time that we had an OS level failure. It is rock solid. We have had systems that have been booted and run for literally years without interruption.
Virtualization. We run IBM AIX as LPARS on Power infrastructure. All of our AIX infrastructure is virtualized making it easy to scale as needed.
Their logical volume manager makes the task of managing storage very simple. It is feature complete and they have mitigated much of the complexity that usually is inherent in LVM implementations.
I have a love/hate relationship with Smit. It is their administrative interface. It is very powerful and very complete which is why I marked it as a pro. It is also a bit clunky and somewhat arcane in its interface but still usable.
I think one thing we'd like to see a bit more in the Nexus space is probably the troubleshooting features. So one would be the I perf feature and being able to test network traffic across links. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of really good features in terms of troubleshooting, but one particular one that we like to see is where we can test network traffic. We can make sure that we have good latency, we got good bandwidth utilization as well. For us that's a big one. We've got to use third party tools to do that. So if the NXOS platform can do it, that's one of the thing we've got to do.
A lot of the built-in commands have not been updated in years. If you're used to some fancy CLI options in Linux, you may be out of luck with AIX.
Out of the box, you cannot run open-source Linux utilities on AIX. There is a toolbox you can install, however, it's not the same versions as you would get in different Linux flavors.
Tab completion for files and Up arrow to re-run previous commands don't work out of the box without running a Korn shell. A small annoyance, but one that catches me every time!
NX-OS has many similarities with the traditional IOS which is quite beneficial when it comes to configuration and learning. As a native Linux system, there are a lot of tools and features that can be enabled for any use case.
AIX is robust, helps the systems administrator, is built to prevent easily made mistakes. If you are used to other variants of Unix (in particularly Linux) there is no steep learning curve to get started with AIX. You need to learn the intricacies of the operating system, but that is true for any new operating system. AIX has built-in tools for almost anything you want and has the AIX Toolbox (on the web) for tools that are not included with AIX by default, but can be installed. Installation of AIX is modular, you can select with components and features you want to have installed. Installation of additional components (and usually also removal of installed components) is easy and straight-forward.
Our switches running NX-OS have provided solid consistent throughput. We haven't had any issues with it not being able to handle what we threw at it. The latency is extremely low. It also has multiple management options that we hope to pursue in the future.
Cisco support never fails me. In terms of timely response, no one is on par with them. They really value the impact of having technical issues and potential business stoppage. Also, their support staff are well equipped with knowledge and skills and easily resolve the most common incidents. Most of the time, we can resolve an issue by just calling them once.
I am much more familiar with the commands in Cisco IOS as it has been around for many more years. I know why NX-OS is a different system and can see the benefits of the fibre channel integration, but I do not understand why the commands had to use a different syntax. With the Nexus switches you don't get a choice of operating system unfortunately.
IBM AIX operating system is advanced with most features and also it's more reliable unlike Redhat Linux, Sun solaris, HP-UX and also we will have well support from the vendor if we run into any issues. IBM AIX is more user-friendly when compared to linux and easy to use so i would prefer the customers to have their operating system as IBM AIX for companies who has more customers.
Up to now, we haven't had a major ground-shaking attack on our networks but we take no chances by using NX-OS alongside a SIEM. All endpoints and workloads are secure so I would say we have plenty of trust in their security model.
