Restoring the Virtual I/O Server
You can restore the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) and user-defined virtual devices by using the installios command, the viosbr command, or IBM® Tivoli® Storage Manager.
About this task
The VIOS contains the following types of information that you need to restore: the VIOS itself and user-defined virtual devices.
- The VIOS includes the base code, applied fix packs, custom device drivers to support disk subsystems, and some user-defined metadata. All this information is restored when you use the installios command.
- User-defined virtual devices include metadata, such as virtual
devices mappings, that define the relationship between the physical
environment and the virtual environment. You can restore user-defined
virtual devices in one of the following ways:
- You can restore user-defined virtual devices by using the viosbr command. Use this option in situations where you plan to restore the configuration information to the same VIOS partition from which it was backed up.
- You can restore user-defined virtual devices by restoring the volume groups and manually
re-creating virtual device mappings. Use this option in situations where you plan to restore the
VIOS to a new or different system. (For example, in the event of a system failure or disaster.)
Furthermore, in these situations, you also need to restore the following components of your
environment. Back up these components to fully recover your VIOS configuration:
- External device configurations, such as storage area network (SAN) devices.
- Resources that are defined on the Hardware Management Console (HMC), such as processor and memory allocations. In other words, restore your HMC partition profile data for the VIOS and its client partitions.
- The operating systems and applications that run in the client logical partitions.
Note: To perform Live Partition Mobility after you restore the VIOS, ensure that you restart the HMC.
You can back up and restore the VIOS as follows.
Backup method | Media | Restoration method |
---|---|---|
To tape | Tape | From tape |
To DVD | DVD-RAM | From DVD |
To remote file system | nim_resources.tar image | From an HMC using the Network Installation Management (NIM) on Linux® facility and the installios command |
To remote file system | mksysb image | From an AIX 5L NIM server, or later and a standard mksysb system installation |
To remote file system | mksysb image | From an AIX 5L NIM server, or later and a standard mksysb system installation |
Tivoli Storage Manager | mksysb image | Tivoli Storage Manager |