Actifio and the curious affair of the AIX copy reduction tech

'Been breeding in the wild for a long time, there's some strange beasts out there'

Actifio seems to having a few problems getting its virtualised file copy reduction technology working with AIX, support for which came with its v6.0 software release.

Here's a note from a customer:

We are attempting to use Actifio here at -----. Unfortunately, we can't get it to work on AIX, nor can Atifio, apparently. They sent us an 'unofficial internal document' which is supposed to be the 'directions' for making it work on AIX. Not what we expected from such a well-funded organisation. … Pretty hard to calculate a project including Actifio if you have to spend days or weeks getting it to fly. It does work well on VMware -- but so far, we can't get it to fly on AIX.

Actifio took this on the chin and came back with this comment from Andrew Gilman, Actifio's senior director of global marketing:

Actifio recently announced AIX support in the 6.0 release ), which is now in the limited availability phase of rollout. As you remember, Actifio 6.0 delivers deeper support/integration, with integration for HP-UX, Solaris, SAP, SQL Cluster, Exchange/Clusters, i-Series and AIX.

That said ... AIX has been in existence since 1986. The number of configurations of it out in the wild is vast, as is the depth of understanding in how those systems work within customer IT shops. While I'm sure given that variability there are some installations that are challenging, I'm also sure we try to help them through these challenges in whatever way we can.

Hopefully any challenges will be worked through and AIX users will get the benefits they hoped for. ®