Backing up your system ... sort of If you've worked more than 5 minutes on AIX system administration, you would have heard of the famous "mksysb". This refers to the backup named from the mksysb command, which m a k es a sys tem b ackup. Actually, the mksysb doesn't back up your entire AIX system - just the root volume group (rootvg). You still need other backup utilities for databases and non-rootvg file systems. Backup exclusive And, come to think of it, the mksysb doesn't necessarily get all the files in your rootvg. If you have... [More]

Tags:  backup mirror aix mkcd mkszfile mkdvd os mksysb /etc/exclude.rootvg logical_volume image.data

Right answer to wrong question I have to admire the people who write documentation and help texts. It's so hard to say the essentials efficiently. I think this is one of the hidden strengths of AIX: the command documentation ("the man pages") are generally easy to read compared to other platforms and software. But sometimes I find that there are answers which are technically correct, but still don't tell you what you need to know. For example, when it comes to breaking a mirror of a logical volume or volume group, you get the choice... [More]

Tags:  technical_writing logical_volume unmirrorvg rmlvcopy mklvcopy rootvg hdisk pages physical_volume smit aix documentation man mirror

SERVING UP LVs, PVs and PAVs Since we've got redundant arrays on SANs these days, it may seem almost quaint to speak about software mirroring using the AIX Logical Volume Manager. Even so, LVM is very useful when you want to move data around. If you need to move to a new storage subsystem or just to a new LUN, and you're not able to do it on the backend, the LVM may be just the ticket. For example, supposing you are using a LUN that's a whole lot bigger than you need. There might be a lot of reasons how it came to that but the most common one... [More]

Tags:  syncvg san lvm disk synchronise varyonvg logical_volume_manager reducevg mirrrovg storage extendvg lv aix mirror smit unmirrorvg pavlova migratepv lslv mklvcopy lun lsvg smitty vg logical_volume rmlvcopy volume_group

  Diamond in the SAN I recently cloned an LPAR from a P6 to a less-busy P5 server via a mksysb backup . Unfortunately, after starting up the new LPAR I found that there was an essential directory missing because it had been excluded via the /etc/exclude.rootvg file (-e option on mksysb). Let's call the directory /diamond (its name has been changed to protect the guilty who didn't back it up). I considered my options but each of them had a drawback. Option 1: restore directory contents from TSM Obstacle: unfortunately, the directory had... [More]

Tags:  mount_point mksysb logical_volume lv importvg chfs volume_group chlv rootvg gentleman exclude.rootvg exportvg tsm aix manners file_system

YOUR TIME IS PRECIOUS! When you need to increase a file system, you can use our old friend smitty. But stepping through the SMIT menus could take a good 3 seconds (at least!) And as a good AIX guru, your time is precious. In a perfect world AIX gurus like you should charge your time by the nanosecond! (Just go tell your boss that the bloke who writes AIX Down Under said so.) Alas, the world is not perfect, as you may have discovered after that friendly chat with the boss. Even so, you can save a few seconds when you have to increase a file... [More]

Tags:  system decrease jfs2 disk nanoseconds guru chfs gigabyte space lv increase logical_volume aix jfs precious block_size file