can AIX be emulated with QEMU or can i buy an old IBM processor to use it? or some other easy way?
-
your best bet is to find a POWER system with AIX already installed and buy that. I doubt you'll find AIX affordable, but you'll have to talk to IBM about pricing to find out. – casey Aug 13 '15 at 21:15
-
1Related: http://serverfault.com/questions/275294/cheap-n-easy-aix-hosting-services – Mark Plotnick Aug 13 '15 at 21:22
4 Answers
You have the following options:
First keep in mind that AIX is a commercial OS, and you need to purchase a license from IBM to use it and get updates.
Option 1: I want to learn/use AIX at home.
Buy an old Power5 Workstation; it is not too expensive (400$-800$) and can run AIX 6.1 or better AIX 7.1, but not VIOS (a sort of "AIX" which can run other AIX partitions, like hp-ux vpars, or vmware-esxi VM's).
This is a nice solution, but you will run only one OS.
Option 2: I want to use AIX and admin it.
Buy a Power7 or Power8 server, they are noisy and really expensive (over 7000$), but you can run VIOS or PowerVC (a very nice cloud similar to OpenStack wich can run AIX and Linux partitions on a Power7 server from a RHEL 6.5 HOST).
This is the better solution to learn to administrate more than one single machine.
Note: even VIOS and PowerVC are commercial products (and RHEL 6.5 too).
Grab a 43P off ebay for about $200. I have one here I use to support some of my older RS/6000 installs.

- 11
-
What currency are you using? $ covers a lot of bases; USD perhaps? – Chris Davies Aug 14 '15 at 21:36
Seems partly like a duplicate of What is the cheapest way to run AIX 6-7 at home? and How to run a fresh version of AIX in a Virtual Machine with a Linux host?
Also, at http://www.polarhome.com/ you can get root shell for AIX for as low as 10€/month.
And as far as I'm aware, emulation of anything more recent then AIX 3 or 4 is not possible currently.

- 2,699