First question is: what does the HMC say about the profile? Could you post the profile (from lssyscfg -r lpar ...) here? Particularily interesting would be if the systems are capped or uncapped.
backupios and installios provide what you (seem to) want - with or without a NIM server and you assumptions are correct. But are you sure you need a real backup of the (whole) VIOS? My experience is...
If you know your way around Linux you can easily jailbreak the HMC and become root. From there it is no problem to loop-mount an ISO-image, no? Basically the HMC is a customized Linux with the...
But you are modifying it live. It's like trying to read a dictionary while someone else is constantly changing the order of the words -- possibly tearing out pages while they're at it, if they're...
That's rather contradictory, like asking for a bluer orange. If it were possible, it would end up being an even bigger hassle and risk than just unmounting it -- imagine losing 30 minutes of live...
It never makes sense to fsck a mounted filesystem, especially a journalled one. The 'moving corruption' may be a race condition between the journal and the disk contents.
Running fsck on a mounted filesystem is a worthless task. Unless you're lucky and it shows no errors - something I've never seen the few times I've witnessed an fsck of a mounted file...
And be sure you have backuped those FS just in case : Have coruupted data is better than none...
Although its years since last time I faced FS issues I still remember the consequences...