Installing the Virtual I/O Server by deploying a system plan

When you deploy a system plan that includes the Virtual I/O Server, the Deploy System Plan wizard creates the Virtual I/O Server logical partition and the logical partition profile and installs the Virtual I/O Server.

Before you start, ensure that the following statements are true:

The system to which you plan to deploy the system plan is managed by a Hardware Management Console (HMC).
The HMC is at version 7 or later. If the HMC is at a version 6 or earlier, then you cannot deploy a system plan. You must manually create the Virtual I/O Server logical partition and partition profile and install the Virtual I/O Server. For instructions, see Installing the Virtual I/O Server manually using the HMC version 6.
The following items are not configured on the managed system:
- Client logical partitions
- Virtual SCSI adapters
- Virtual Ethernet adapters
- Shared Ethernet Adapters
- EtherChannel adapters, or Link Aggregation devices
- Storage pools
- Backing devices
System plans can be deployed only to new systems, or to systems that do not already have a Virtual I/O Server logical partition configured. (The Virtual I/O Server can be installed, but not configured.)

Because of this limitation, the Deploy System Plan wizard will not allow you to partially deploy the Virtual I/O Server logical partition. However, you will still be able to partially deploy other parts of the system plan.