IBM AIX & UNIX Systems Administration

Flexible IBM AIX and UNIX expertise for end users, IT service providers and MSPs.

Baby Blue provides remote IBM AIX and UNIX systems administration and managed support services for organisations running business-critical IBM Power and UNIX environments.

We work directly with end-user organisations that need additional AIX and UNIX skills, capacity or ongoing systems administration, as well as IT service providers, MSPs and maintenance companies that support IBM environments but do not have the specialist IBM Power, AIX or UNIX expertise in-house.

Whether you need complete AIX administration, additional expertise to support your existing team, specialist assistance with an individual project, or IBM skills to support your own customer, our experienced engineers can provide the level of support you need without the cost of recruiting additional permanent resources.

IBM AIX Expertise When You Need It

IBM AIX environments often support some of the most important applications within an organisation, but the specialist skills required to manage them are becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain internally.

This is particularly challenging for organisations with only a small number of IBM Power systems, where employing dedicated AIX specialists may be difficult to justify.

Baby Blue provides flexible access to experienced IBM AIX and UNIX engineers, allowing you to supplement your existing capabilities or outsource defined areas of systems administration without adding permanent headcount.

Support can be provided remotely on an ongoing basis, for a defined number of hours or days, or when specific expertise is required.

AIX Support for End Users

For end-user organisations, we can work alongside your existing infrastructure team or take responsibility for defined areas of your AIX and UNIX environment.

This could be as simple as providing experienced AIX resources when your internal team needs additional assistance, through to delivering structured ongoing administration and managed support.

We can help where you:

• Have lost or are struggling to recruit experienced AIX skills
• Have only a small IBM Power estate and cannot justify dedicated AIX resources
• Need additional capacity for holidays, projects or periods of increased workload
• Need assistance with AIX upgrades, patching, VIOS, PowerHA or firmware
• Want an independent review of how your environment is being managed
• Need ongoing administration without employing additional permanent staff
• Have a technical issue that requires specialist IBM Power or AIX knowledge

Our engineers can work as an extension of your existing team, providing as much or as little support as you require.

AIX Support for IT Service Providers, MSPs & Maintenance Companies

Not every IT service provider needs to maintain specialist IBM Power and AIX skills internally.

You may already provide infrastructure management, cloud, maintenance or managed services to a customer but lack the specialist IBM expertise required to manage part of their environment.

Baby Blue can provide that expertise behind your service.

Our engineers can work alongside your technical teams to support customer AIX environments, resolve complex issues, undertake upgrades and projects, or provide ongoing systems administration.

Services can also be delivered on a collaborative or white-label basis, allowing you to retain ownership of the customer relationship while accessing specialist IBM skills when required.

This gives service providers the ability to support IBM Power customers without having to recruit and retain specialist AIX resources for what may be a relatively small number of systems.

What Our AIX & UNIX Administration Covers

Our services can include:

• AIX operating system administration
• AIX OS upgrades
• Technology Level (TL) and Service Pack planning and implementation
• Patching and maintenance planning
• LPAR configuration, management and optimisation
• VIOS administration and upgrades
• PowerHA configuration, administration and failover testing
• Filesystem management and storage provisioning
• NIM configuration and network installation environments
• IBM Power firmware lifecycle management
• HMC administration and upgrades
• Security hardening and remediation
• User and access administration
• RBAC and LDAP integration
• Backup validation and recovery planning
• Disaster recovery readiness and testing
• Performance analysis and optimisation
• Kernel and system resource tuning
• Root cause analysis and technical troubleshooting
• Automation and scripting
• Capacity planning
• Technical health checks and environment reviews

We can also provide administration and technical support across Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Oracle Solaris, helping customers and service providers manage mixed UNIX and Linux environments alongside IBM AIX.

AIX Patching, Upgrades & Lifecycle Management

Keeping an AIX environment supported and secure requires more than simply applying patches.

Operating system levels, Technology Levels, Service Packs, VIOS versions, HMC levels and IBM Power firmware all need to be considered together.

Before making changes, our engineers can review the existing environment, identify dependencies and establish an appropriate upgrade or maintenance path.

We can assist with:

• AIX version and Technology Level upgrades
• Service Pack and security update planning
• VIOS upgrades
• HMC updates
• IBM Power firmware updates
• Compatibility and prerequisite checking
• Change planning and implementation
• Post-change validation

Where environments have fallen behind current supported levels, we can help establish a practical route forward rather than simply recommending that everything is upgraded at once.

PowerHA & High Availability

High Availability environments require regular administration and testing if they are going to work when they are actually needed.

Our AIX engineers can assist with PowerHA environments including configuration reviews, cluster administration, maintenance, troubleshooting and planned failover testing.

We can also review whether existing HA arrangements remain aligned with the current production environment and identify configuration or operational issues that could affect recovery.

Performance & Troubleshooting

When an AIX system experiences a performance or availability issue, identifying the root cause often requires experience across the complete IBM Power environment.

Our engineers can investigate issues involving CPU, memory, storage, networking, LPAR configuration, VIOS, operating system settings and application dependencies.

This can be provided as part of an ongoing service or as specialist assistance when your own team or service provider requires additional IBM expertise.

Security, Backup & Disaster Recovery

AIX security and resilience should be reviewed as part of normal systems administration rather than only when an audit or incident identifies a problem.

We can assist with security configuration, user access, patching, backup validation and disaster recovery readiness.

Where required, Baby Blue can also undertake more detailed IBM AIX health and security assessments, providing documented findings and recommended remediation actions.

Flexible Ways to Engage

There is no requirement to outsource your entire AIX environment.

Baby Blue can provide support in a way that fits your existing team, service model and requirements.

Fully Managed

We take responsibility for agreed areas of your AIX or UNIX environment, providing ongoing systems administration, maintenance and technical support.

Part-Managed / Shared

Our engineers work alongside your existing IT team, providing specialist skills and additional capacity where required.

Structured Monthly Engineering Allocation

Reserve an agreed amount of engineering time each month, giving your organisation predictable access to experienced AIX and UNIX resources.

Remote AIX Support & Flexible Resourcing

Access experienced IBM AIX engineers remotely when your team needs additional capacity or specialist expertise.

This can be used for ongoing administration, holiday or skills-gap cover, troubleshooting, projects, upgrades or individual technical tasks.

For service providers, all of these models can also be used to supplement your own technical capabilities and provide specialist IBM expertise to your customers.

Why Baby Blue?

Baby Blue specialises in IBM infrastructure and the systems that organisations continue to rely upon to run critical workloads.

Rather than providing generic infrastructure support, we provide access to engineers with practical experience of IBM Power, AIX and enterprise UNIX environments.

Our approach is flexible. We can work directly with your IT team, alongside an existing service provider, or behind another provider as their specialist IBM resource.

Whether you need a few hours of expert assistance, additional resources for a project, ongoing systems administration or a fully managed service, we can build the support around what you actually need.

Need IBM AIX Expertise?

If you are an end user struggling to maintain AIX skills internally, or an IT service provider that needs IBM expertise to support a customer, talk to Baby Blue.

We can provide flexible access to experienced IBM AIX and UNIX engineers without the need to recruit additional permanent resources.