Installing the Virtual I/O Server using ios_mksysb

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You can use the following procedures to install the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS) into environments managed by the Hardware Management Console (HMC) or the Integrated Virtualization Manager using the ios_mksysb resource.

Prerequisites

  • The Network Installation Management (NIM) master must be configured, and SPOT and mksysb resources must be defined. See Configuring the NIM master and creating basic installation resources.

    The mksysb resource can be created from a VIOS NIM management client.

    Note: The mksysb on the VIOS media is split into multiple files due to the file size constraint when you generate the mksysb file for the VIOS media. The split mksysb files need to be joined together when copied from media to the hard disk of the system. The following example shows the VIOS media mounted to the /mnt directory.
    cat /mnt/nimol/ioserver_res/mksysb \
/mnt/nimol/ioserver_res/mksysb2 > /export/mksysb/vio_mksysb

    The mksyb file may be split across multiple VIOS media. In that case, the mksysb file must be concatenated into a single file using the cat command describe in the example above from a multivolume VIOS media.

    Define the mksysb file as a NIM ios_mksysb resource.

    The mksysb image can also be created from the VIOS by using the following command:
    nim -o define -t ios_mksysb
    See Defining the mksysb resource.
  • The NIM VIOS client to be installed must already exist in the NIM environment. To add the client to the NIM environment, see Adding VIOS management objects to the NIM environment.
  • The SPOT resource must be created from the ios_mksysb resource. To do this, define the SPOT resource, by specifying a ios_mksysb NIM object as the value for the source attribute.
  • The bosinst_data resource can be copied from the VIOS media and defined as a NIM bosinst_data resource or defined as new. To define a new bosinst_data resource, copy the bosinst.data template from a system at /usr/lpp/bos.inst/bosinst.template and set RECOVER_DEVICES=Default. If the ios_mksysb resource is to be deployed to a specific disk then the target_disk_data section of the bosinst.data must be populated with disk information from the VIOS server. For more information about the bosinst.data, consult the documentation about the bosinst.data file.
  • An ios_mksysb installation restores the VIOS and the Base Operation System to a Virtual I/O Server.
  • The ios_mksysb images enable you to clone one system image onto multiple target systems.