IBM is pleased to announce that BigFix Patch for AIX released several enhancements to the AIX Advanced Deployment Wizard to help manage alternate disk patching, as well as enhancements to the AIX Deployment Wizard to support NFS when deploying patches. This release also includes a new dashboard for checking the overall health of an AIX deployment.
Highlights:
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Technology level and service pack deployment on existing rootvg clones
You can use the options in the AIX Advanced Deployment Wizard to create a custom content for deploying technology level and service pack updates to an existing rootvg clone. -
Mirror management
You can break two-way mirrors before creating an alternate disk clone from the AIX Advanced Deployment Wizard. Breaking mirrors before patching is a common practice and is typically in a failback plan. When the patch installation or the upgrade is verified, you can use the Re-mirror disk back to rootvg task (ID #83) to resume disk mirroring. -
Alternate disk clone creation
You can use the options in the AIX Advanced Deployment Wizard to create an alternate disk clone of the current rootvg on targeted AIX systems without deploying any updates to the clone. -
Deployment previews
You can use the options in the AIX Advanced Deployment Wizard to create a Fixlet to run installation previews for technology level or service pack patches for a selected fix pack. The preview can help you identify the installation commands that are used and if there are any missing filesets. -
Fileset rejection
As a rollback feature, you can use the AIX Advanced Deployment Wizard to reject filesets, which are in the applied state, and restore the previous version of the update . You can reject filesets individually or by fix pack. You can also preview the fileset rejection process before actually rejecting any filesets. -
NFS support
You can now deploy fileset updates and program temporary fixes (PTFs) from an Network File System (NFS) share. The AIX Deployment Wizard recognizes NFS paths as the source location of these updates therefore allowing you to access the files remotely. Deploying updates from an NFS share shortens the installation time, decreases bandwidth usage, and reduces storage costs. -
AIX Deployment Health Check Dashboard
You can use the AIX Deployment Health Check Dashboard to view a listing of all the filesets that are installed on an endpoint and the results of running preview deployments.
Actions to Take:
Gathering of the site will automatically show the updates made.
Published Site Version:
Patches for AIX Site, version 424
Documentation:
For more information about the new features, see the Patch Management for AIX User’s Guide.
For additional details on alternate disk patching, see the wiki article: Important Notes for Alternate Disk Patching.
Application Engineering Team
IBM BigFix