How To
Summary
Backing up the PowerVM/VIOS system is an important task in order to keep a full recent backup of the VIOS in a full system failure or if needed to restore to an older configuration
Objective
There are two types of backups in PowerVM/VIOS that we are going through:
- A backup of the VIOS configuration by using the viosbr command.
- A full VIOS system backup by using the backupios command.
Steps
Backup of the VIOS configuration using the viosbr command
The viosbr command backs up all the device properties and the virtual device configuration on the VIOS. The configuration includes information about logical devices, such as storage pools, file-backed storage pools, the virtual media repository, and PowerVM® Active Memory Sharing (AMS) paging devices. It also includes the virtual devices, such as Etherchannel, shared Ethernet adapters (SEAs), virtual server adapters, the virtual log repository, and server virtual Fibre Channel (SVFC) adapters
To back up the VIOS configurations by using viosbr command by the following command:
$ viosbr -backup -file FileName
If there is no directory is specified, then the backup is in the /home/padmin/cfgbackups directory
If the VIOS has a Shared Storage Pool (SSP), there is a flag to specify the cluster name to back up the SSP configuration
$ viosbr -backup -file FileName -clustername clusterName
More information is available on the viosbr documentation about backing up the VIOS and restoring the VIOS configurations
Full VIOS system backup by using the backupios command
The backupios command creates a backup of the Virtual I/O Server and places it onto a file system, bootable tape, or DVD. The backup can be used to reinstall a system to its original state after it was corrupted
In order to run the backupios command, this would depend on the environment as it would depend on available methods to restore the VIOS
Make sure the file system that the backup file is created on to have enough space. It is recommended to use the /home/padmin run the following command and make sure the /home has available space:
$ df -g
If the method used to restore the VIOS by using the HMC and it outputs a file named "nim_resources.tar", the backupios command would be as follows
$ backupios -file /home/padmin
If the method used to restore the VIOS by using the NIM, the backupios command would be as follows:
$ backupios -file /home/padmin/Filename.mksysb -mksysb
If there is no space for the backup to get created, add the one or all flags
-nomedialib Prevents the contents of the media repository from being saved as part of the backupios process.
-nosvg Prevents the volume groups structure of user-defined volume groups from being saved
More information is available on the backupios documentation about backing up the VIOS system as a bootable image
Related Information
Document Location
Worldwide
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Document Information
Modified date:
03 October 2023
UID
ibm17030729