UNIX Admin (AIX) - prospects ?

Rdk1979

With no prior experience im currently working in a team responsible for maintaining a large organizations servers and networks. My daily role is changing server back up tapes with quite rightly no work on the root AIX systems. I'll be sent on the required training courses all paid for which I know is incredibly fortunate. The tasks I'll most likely do are responding to requests for adding storage etc; reporting faults to IBM and helping out on installation of New hardware e.g. Oracle.

What I'd like to know is - is this a good career path to get into?Are the tasks and the role I described available and valued both in the UK and further afield e.g. USA; Australia and Europe? That's one of the main reasons I'm interested in pursuing this.

Thanks

TacoRocket

It's a very specialized skill. It's not bad by any means because I've been looking into AIX administration but not all shops use AIX.

joelsfood

I managed Aix systems for several years a decade or so ago and rarely ever got a call about it. I ended up just taking it off my resume, never got any calls on it.

That being said, if they want to pay for training, hop on it! It will help you with other flavors of *nix. Just don't look for smitty on a Solaris system

bigdogz

There are a great deal of Unix jobs out there. Specialities in AIX are rare but pay well. You also get a checkbox for backups. They may seem boring but are essential to daily business functions.

You should take the training to show your boss you are will to learn.

Good Luck!!!

gespenstern

I also managed power systems for a while.

Don't think that there's a bright future for this. Their market share steadily decreases year over year. AIX Engineers aren't paid more than, say, Windows infrastructure engineers from what I can tell. It won't go away anytime soon cause many of these systems run a code that was written in 70-s.

I've been on IBM Enterprise 2014 in Vegas, talked to people. You can easily spot an IBM engineers crowd: they are 99% white, 99% male, 99% 50+ years old. Everybody knows that the future of this whole tech is pretty grim if some revolution won't happen, but it's unlikely. Also they know that it is declining steadily so they won't lose their jobs before retiring. For younger guys it is different, of course.

Linux is certainly gaining ground and if I had to choose I would work on Linux.

Another way to increase your marketability while working on AIX is to study Oracle, since Oracle DBMS is a number one software on AIX (if we won't take own proprietary stuff into account). Oracle seems to be doing okay and maybe has some future.

And just for some background, last year IBM "sold" their Power Systems manufacturing business to Global Foundries. In quotes because they not just gave it away for free, they are obliged to pay to Global Foundries to continue manufacturing of Power processors. That's how lucrative it is.