Backing up the Virtual I/O Server to a remote file system by creating a mksysb image

You can back up the Virtual I/O Server base code, applied fix packs, custom device drivers to support disk subsystems, and some user-defined metadata to a remote file system by creating a mksysb file.

Backing up the Virtual I/O Server to a remote file system will create the mksysb image in the directory you specify. The mksysb image is an installable image of the root volume group in a file.

Before you start, complete the following tasks:

If the system is managed by the Integrated Virtualization Manager, then you need to back up your partition profile data for the management partition and its clients before you back up the Virtual I/O Server. For instructions, see Backing up and restoring partition data. (Alternatively, you can use the bkprofdata command.)
If you plan to restore the Virtual I/O Server from a Network Installation Management (NIM) server, verify that the NIM server is at the latest release of AIX®. To find the latest updates, see the Fix Central Web site.
Ensure that the remote file system is available and mounted.
Ensure that the Virtual I/O Server has root write access to the server on which the backup will be created.

To back up the Virtual I/O Server to a remote file system, follow these steps:

Create a mount directory where the backup image, mksysb image, will be written. For example, to create the directory /home/backup, type:
```
mkdir /home/backup
```
Mount an exported directory on the mount directory. For example:
```
mount server1:/export/ios_backup /home/backup
```
where server1 is the NIM server from which you plan to restore the Virtual I/O Server.
Run the backupios command with the -file option. Specify the path to the mounted directory. For example:
```
backupios -file /home/backup/filename.mksysb -mksysb
```
where filename is the name of mksysb image that this command creates in the specified directory. You can use the mksysb image to restore the Virtual I/O Server from a NIM server.
If you plan to restore the Virtual I/O Server to a different system from which it was backed up, then you need to back up the user-defined virtual devices. For instructions, see Backing up user-defined virtual devices.