Preparing for virtual optical storage

To prepare to use virtual optical storage, you need to consider these items:

• Whether you have the authority to create virtual images

  You must have security administrator (*SECADM) and all object (*ALLOBJ) special authorities to use the commands required to create virtual images.

• The amount of disk space available

  Because virtual images are stored on your disk units, they can quickly use disk space. You have to determine whether you have enough disk space. The smallest allowable size for an optical image file volume is 48 MB. The largest allowable size is 1 TB.

  To determine how much disk space you have, follow these steps:

  1. From IBM Navigator for i, expand Configuration and Service > Disk Pools.
  2. Right-click the disk pool you want to view, and select Properties.
  3. Select the Capacity page.

  The Capacity page displays the used space, free space, total capacity, threshold, and percentage of disk space that is used for the disk pool.

  You can also use the Work with Disk Status (WRKDSKSTS) command to determine your free space.

• The number of volumes of virtual images that you need
  To determine how many volumes you need, follow these steps:

  1. Determine how much data you plan to store.
  2. Determine the size of each virtual image. You can determine the size based on what you want to do with the optical image file. For example, if you copy the optical image files to a CD, the largest you can make the volumes is 650 MB.
  3. Divide the amount of data you are going to store by the size of your volumes. For example, if you plan to save 1 GB of data and you want to copy your volumes to a CD, you must create two volumes.

If you are doing a full backup, the first volume must be at least 1489 MB because the first volume must be large enough to store the Licensed Internal Code. The remaining volumes can be smaller than 1489 MB.