CentOS Linux vs. IBM AIX

I have been a CentOS user for over 10 years and remain loyal to the core OS. When it comes to stability and speed, there's no other OS I'd recommend over it. I base this recommendation on my personal experience, as I have multiple development and production servers running the CentOS software today. It's running on newer and older hardware with ease, and the price is right!

Incentivized

IBM AIX is a very powerful and extremely stable operating environment. It is well suited for applications that are business critical and cannot tolerate outages. It is best used to address large enterprise level application needs where stability and scalability are of paramount importance. IBM AIX is less useful for small enterprises.

Incentivized

• First of all, CentOS is one of the most secure and stable OSes straits from the box.
• High performance on the average hardware.
• In most of my scenarios—easy and quick deployment.
• Huge KB community that helps to build and support different services on CentOS.
• Versions lifecycle.

Incentivized

• IBM AIX is a very stable server product, and I can't recall a time when the server has crashed due to a hardware fault.
• If you have legacy software that can't run on the new-fangled Linux flavors, AIX might be the way to go.
• AIX has a host of built-in management tools that makes system configuration easy for a novice.

Incentivized

• It's not as intuitive as it could be
• Some packages can be quite old compared with other distributions
• Breaking changes appear often when packages are obsoleted usually with no supported transition path (this is a general *NIX problem, but it's more accentuated in CentOS)

Incentivized

• While there are options to install some standard Linux tools like Bash, they are not always easy to procure
• Allowing easier flexibility in how some tools and CLI options work would make it easier for admins to float between operating systems.

Incentivized

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.

Again, written documentation is excellent, even on the older versions. The support community is the best. It is comprehensive and I would say that it global because it transcends national boundaries. Also, you find all types of people using CentOS to do all sorts of things so you are bound to find someone to talk to if there are problems.

Incentivized

There is lots of documentation out there for AIX. On the times I've had to address a hardware issue, IBM's support has been great.

Incentivized

Ubuntu Linux is another candidate that we've evaluated. It stacks up well against CentOS Linux, however it does have some quirks we need to deal with such as package management and stability. For the most part, the server version of Ubuntu is stable, but we stick with CentOS Linux because it seems to have a slight edge over Ubuntu in that realm as well. I have colleagues at other firms that are wholesale Ubuntu server infrastructure, and they are very happy with it and Ubuntu is favorable there. With the changes that have occurred or may still yet occur at CentOS Linux, we may go down the path towards Ubuntu. But for now, CentOS Linux is where we are parked and will remain for the foreseeable future.

Incentivized

Compared to other Unix-like operating systems, IBM AIX is the one with a solid roadmap into the future and is likely to stay around for a long time (it is over 30 years old and still being updated with new features and components all the time). Compared to many Linux variants, the AIX operating system is more robust, easier to manage and well-supported by its vendor.

• Since CentOS is free, our developers and engineers can use it without regard for dipping into project budgets.
• We can spin up a CentOS VM, use it and then destroy it without having to worry about licensing headaches.
• CentOS can run on just about any hardware platform: server, laptop, old hardware, etc. so that makes it less expensive in that we don't have to buy specialized hardware for it.

Incentivized

• IBM AIX is more expensive but its worth to have it for the features its embedded with
• It's not suited for small customers because of the hardware cost as the ROI will be less for smaller customers.
• IBM AIX is well suited for companies who has more customers so that ROI doesn't impact.