How to clone an AIX 5.3?


 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Operating Systems AIX How to clone an AIX 5.3?
# 1  
Old 06-20-2016
How to clone an AIX 5.3?

Hello all,

I am trying to clone an entire aix 5.3 machine , not sure on the procedure.Can anyone help on what can be done ?Thanks
# 2  
Old 06-21-2016
Hi Gull05,

You have a number of options, depending on the way the system was built. The simplest way would be to use the "mksysb" command, but this depends on the machine being in single user mode.

You don't actually say if the system is SAN attached or is it an LPAR, could really do with some additional information about the system here.

Regards

Gull04
# 3  
Old 06-21-2016
Hello Gull04,

Sorry i am a newbie to whole aix , Can you explain the command on how i can find the details whether it is with LPAR or SAN.Thanks in advance.
# 4  
Old 06-22-2016
Hi Gull05,

As to the "mksysb" command, you will find all the requisite information in the man pages. To access these, logon to the server and run the command man mksysb for the other information we require the following.

To identify the disk information run lsdev -Cc disk and to identify whether you are in an LPAR run "lparstat" from the HMC

Regards

Gull04
# 5  
Old 06-23-2016
Hello Gull04 ,

Thanks a lot for that .
Code:
AIX # lsdev -Cc disk
hdisk0 Available  Virtual SCSI Disk Drive
hdisk2 Available  Virtual SCSI Disk Drive

lparstat command returned the below when tried from AIX itself
Code:
AIX#lparstat

System configuration: type=Shared mode=Capped smt=On lcpu=8 mem=13567 psize=8 ent=0.50

%user  %sys  %wait  %idle physc %entc  lbusy  vcsw phint
----- ----- ------ ------ ----- ----- ------ ----- -----
  1.2   0.6    0.1   98.1  0.01   2.2    2.6 2298033479 29970185

When lparstat command is issued from HMC,it returned the following,
Code:
lparstat
bash: lparstat: command not found

Can you please suggest how i can go further , also can you brief about the mksysb command for me please.Thanks
# 6  
Old 06-23-2016
Quote:
Originally Posted by gull05
Can you please suggest how i can go further , also can you brief about the mksysb command for me please.Thanks
An mksysb is a backup image of the rootvg along with some code to make the image bootable and restorable. You take it, boot a blank system with this image and have an exact duplicate, save for the IP adresses (there is a special point in the boot process to enter new IP addresses to avoid duplicates).

All this information could you have gleaned from the man page, as gull04 has suggested you do. Basically a mksysb does a backupvg rootvg (for the backupvg command see the man page) and ultimately uses backup (has also a man page - read it) to do the backup.

To understand what is in this image do the following command on your system:

Code:
lsvg -l rootvg

You will see a list of filesystems similar to this one:

Code:
# lsvg -l rootvg
rootvg:
LV NAME             TYPE       LPs     PPs     PVs  LV STATE      MOUNT POINT
hd5                 boot       1       1       1    closed/syncd  N/A
hd6                 paging     128     128     1    open/syncd    N/A
hd8                 jfs2log    1       1       1    open/syncd    N/A
hd4                 jfs2       13      13      1    open/syncd    /
hd2                 jfs2       130     130     1    open/syncd    /usr
hd9var              jfs2       96      96      1    open/syncd    /var
hd3                 jfs2       16      16      1    open/syncd    /tmp
hd1                 jfs2       29      29      1    open/syncd    /home
hd10opt             jfs2       56      56      1    open/syncd    /opt
lg_dumplv           sysdump    64      64      1    open/syncd    N/A
livedump            jfs2       8       8       1    open/syncd    /var/adm/ras/livedump
hapowerlv           jfs2       32      32      1    open/syncd    /halogs

These filesystems (which hold every part the systems configuration) are the filesystems to be backed up into the image.

Regarding cloning a system: note that AIX 5.3 is not supported on any modern hardware: not on POWER7 and definitely not on POWER8. You might want to consider updating to something less than 5 years out of any support.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
# 7  
Old 07-05-2016
Thanks Bakunin,

Spoke to my Manager , looks like we cannot update aix for next 6 months atleast.

I had a look at mksysb, looks like it can clone only rootvg and can you suggest what can we do to clone the logical volume?

Also , can you suggest how to create a new LPAR for holding the destination system ?

Thanks
Login or Register to Ask a Question

Previous Thread | Next Thread

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. AIX

Clone 1 Hard disk fromIBM Intellipoint server with AIX 5.x

Hello to all, Im having a new task in a new world (AIX - IBM Servers) I have an IBM Server (Type - 9111-285 very old one) with one Hard disk (73 GB 10 K) with AIX 5.x, and I need to clone the existing disk to another with the same specifications. Could you please give me some advice in order... (7 Replies)
Discussion started by: trevian3969
7 Replies

2. AIX

Need to clone two AIX machines

Hello, I have two AIX machine and i want to make the two nodes to be identical , so i will change the Hostname, IP and copy the hosts file to node 2. anything else need to copy it from node 1 to node 2 to ensure that two nodes will be the same? Thanks (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: moudmm
8 Replies

3. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Clone redhat to another PC

Hi, I'm a new user of this forum and I'm not an expert of linux. I have a broken old pc with red hat linux, I clone hdd to another pc with different mainboard and it's ok but it has only one problem, the usb ports not work. In the boot this message appears: ... (9 Replies)
Discussion started by: aitv
9 Replies

4. AIX

Clone or mirror your AIX OS larger disk to smaller disk ?

hello folks, I have a 300GB ROOTVG volume groups with one filesystem /backup having 200GB allocated space Now, I cannot alt disk clone or mirrorvg this hdisk with another smaller disk. The disk size has to be 300GB; I tried alt disk clone and mirrorvg , it doesn't work. you cannot copy LVs as... (9 Replies)
Discussion started by: filosophizer
9 Replies

5. HP-UX

software ID clone

the following command will give me software ID from HP machine with hpux10.2: >uname -a HP-UX bmd350 B.10.20 D 9000/831 2011043966 64-user license The string 2011043966 is the actual software ID which is used as number to license software. Now my machine breaks down and I would like to... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: derf001
1 Replies

6. IP Networking

Clone on virtualBox

Hello; Please,I did the clone on virtualBox, but the machines have the same IP address: eth2 Link encap: Ethernet HWaddr 8:00:27: f0: 92:19 inet addr: 192.168.1.4 Bcast: 192.168.1.255 Mask: 255.255.255.0 how to change the address please? Thank you so much (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: chercheur857
6 Replies

7. AIX

Mount a SAN LUN which contains clone copy - AIX 6.1

Hello Everyone, Can someone help me to mount a SAN hdisk which contains a clone data copy(san) of the remote server to the another machine. Both servers are running in AIX. Thanks in advance ! Regards, Gowtham.G (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: gowthamakanthan
3 Replies

8. Solaris

Solaris 8 Clone - Help

I've got two drives in the same Sun server and I've been cloning the boot drive to the secondary drive by using both ufsdump/ufsrestore and the dd command sucessfully. When I try and boot the cloned drive I get the following error: WARNING - /usr/sbin/fsck not found. Most likely the mount... (10 Replies)
Discussion started by: johnj1965
10 Replies

9. Solaris

clone solaris

I have a Sun Solaris 9 and I would like to clone the Operating System from a sun4u Sun Fire 480R machine to a Sun Fire 280R machine. The disk is the same size, the 480R has no space disk slot to the 280R disk for mirrioring, i have no external disk, I am not allowed to take the machine down. ... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: hassan1
1 Replies

10. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

clone harddisk

Hi, i have to make an excect physical copie of a sun unix station harddisk. I have to make all partitions the same on about 60 harddisks, and also they should contain the same data/info. I have hade a look at commands 'DD' and 'UFSDUMP' but both of them are not sufficient enough. Can... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: dirk2
5 Replies
Login or Register to Ask a Question