IBM AIX 5.2 cloning Hdds


 
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Operating Systems AIX IBM AIX 5.2 cloning Hdds
# 1  
Old 05-12-2017
IBM IBM AIX 5.2 cloning Hdds

I have an old IBM Power 5 9111-520 that has data on it but the system is failing. I need to move it to a more reliable server. The current system has two drives and no raid. I would like to setup my "newer" system with raid and two partitions then clone my setup over. What is the best way to do this?

Both systems are identical. I tried to backup the system to a tape drive but it states the system is too large for system image creation on tape drive to try DVD. So I tried to burn a dvd with the backup wizard. No Joy. It creates the system image but fails on the burning.

Please Help!! Thanks
# 2  
Old 05-15-2017
Welcome BDC80,

I have a few questions first:-
  • How many volume groups do you have?
  • Are the filesystems mirrored?
  • How big are the filesystems?
  • Which filesystems hold your business data?
  • Is any data stored on raw logical volumes? e.g. passed to a database etc.
  • What tape drive do you have, and what capacity media?
  • What type of DVD drive do you have?
  • Do you have the correct DVD media?
  • Where does the backup fail? Can you show us the messages?
  • If you are using mysysb, do you exclude anything from the backup?
  • What general backups do you have in place for your business application/data?

Sorry it's a long list. Much of this could be illustrated with output from these commands:-
Code:
lsvg
lspv
lsvg -l rootvg          # .... and for any other volume groups you have
lspv -l hdisk0          # .... and for any other physical volumes you have
df -k
lsattr -El /dev/rmt0    # or appropriate tape drive device
lsattr -El /dev/cd0     # or appropriate DVD drive device


Please wrap any output in CODE tags to make it easy to read and to preserve multiple spaces for the fixed width columns.
# 3  
Old 06-20-2017
Hi,

a) AIX 5.2 does not virtualize the same way AIX 5.3 can (no virtual ethernet, no microparititions). The product you needed for that is vWPAR 5.2 - and, as the AIX 5.3 version is rumored to be withdrawn from marketing soon - I am going to guess the vWPAR 5.2 version is already withdrawn.
b) make an mksysb image asap to a file, do not worry about it being bootable or not. Just make sure you have the image.

More to come - my ride has arrived.

So, a day later... continuing as promised.

c) to test your DVD making process - years ago (AIX 5.3 ML05 days) I wrote a short article on how to create a bootable DVD/CD (CD will work in this case) - so that you could then read and install an mksysb file from a second DVD. This was a problem I was having when moving things from some old P43-140 systems to a POWER4. If I recall correctly, the process describes (see http://www.rootvg.net/content/view/134/88/) how a previously captured "mksysb" file can be used as input to the mkDVD process. The mksysb image created was the minimum needed to create a bootable disk.
Largely I gave up on mkDVD as a workable backup method (running the command "live" means you need to have 3X space - the actual system, the temp mksysb file it makes, and then the iso9660 file(s) it creates. One thing I learned to not do is let mkDVD write directly to the DVD (although that is probably not what you have - my POWER4 had a DVD/RAM device, soI could also use the -U option (write as UDF format to the RAM-DVD (special kind of RW-DVD media). (basically, it was so horrendously slow I always wrote to files, transferred them to a PC and burned the DVD on my PC).

So, hoping your system is still alive enough for you to make an mksysb image - I also highly recommend backing up as many non-OS related files (i.e., your real data) in a tar file - so it is easily readable on various platforms.

If you have access to any AIX 5.3 media - this should accept most applications supported on AIX 5.2 - then you could try the process of migrating your applicaitons to AIX 5.3 - and then run that on vWPAR for AIX 5.3.

Hope this helps!

Last edited by MichaelFelt; 06-21-2017 at 07:30 AM.. Reason: promised to continue...
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