OK, first: WHERE do you see the DVD drive? From the below output i cannot see which system the output is from. The LPAR? The VIOS? Something else?

Second:
Note that the "-P2-" in the location code means "Planar 2". Your screenshot below only shows items from Planar 1. It is either wrong or incomplete.

No. The status "Available" means that a device which was configured once is indeed connected and working - the "device", not a media in it. To understand how this works, here is an example: attach a harddisk to a system. Run cfgmgr and the harddisk device will be created. It will be "available". Now disconnect the harddisk again. It will become "defined", because its definition in the ODM (you remember from the other thread?) is still there but the disk is not. If you now use rmdev on it the ODM definitions will be removed and the device will vanish, but if you don't it will stay there. If you would reattach the disk it will go from "defined" to "available" again.

Usually you create a CD-device with a certain SMITty-panel, smitty mkdvd (or maybe smitty mkcd, i am not entirely sure) or something such. Then you attach the physical DVD drive via a DLPAR-operation and remove it the same way again. Once the drive is available you can mount/umount media until you remove the drive via another DLPAR-operation again.

I hope this helps.

bakunin