Originally posted by: hokusai

​There is conflicting information on NIM version vs image version. I found some blogs describing problems with using a 5.3 NIM to install 6.1 LPARs, but I also found documents saying that there is no problem using a 6.1 based NIM to install 7.1 LPARs!!

• p server with aix 6.1 and NIM
• p server with 2 AIX 7.1 LPARs defined (with vios)
  • LPAR A - AIX7.1 Installed
  • LPAR B - AIX.7.1 Installed

My question is: can I create a mksysb of the rootvg from LPAR A , copy it to the AIX 6.1 server and using NIM, "clone" LPAR A to LPAR B?

Does the NIM server have to be AIX 7.1 also?

If this can not be done. Can this be done using the HMC?

Originally posted by: Wouter Liefting

In general, your NIM server needs to be at the highest AIX level that you want to install. This is because NIM needs information about that particular version of AIX in order to create the SPOT, and to determine whether an lpp_source can be used to install from scratch (simages = yes).

You may be able to get around this by using NIM exclusively to restore an mksysb, but I would not know if a 6.1 NIM server is capable of extracting a 7.1 SPOT from an 7.1 mksysb image. And without a SPOT that's on, or at least very near the AIX level of the mksysb you won't be able to get it started. I have not tested it, but I would expect that you cannot restore a 7.1 mksysb using a 6.1 SPOT.

But the main question is probably: Why can't you upgrade your NIM server to 7.1?

As an alternative approach, you can also forget about the NIM code itself, and simply setup TFTP/Bootp/NFS manually, to mimic the behaviour of a NIM server. I have done this myself on a Linux box to do a greenfield install of a VIO server in an otherwise-Intel environment. I had no AIX box on premise to setup a proper NIM server, and I had no physical access to the data center to juggle CDs/USBs. So I asked the VMWare guys to roll out an Intel Linux VM, then configured TFTP/Bootp/NFS on that server and booted the Power node from that Linux machine. Worked fine. You may be able to achieve something similar to solve your problem.

Yet another alternative approach is to use the virtual media repository of the VIO server. You can define a blank R/W ISO image to your LPAR A, then use mksysb/mkcd to put an mksysb on that blank image and make it bootable. Then go back to the VIO server, attach this ISO image to your LPAR B and boot from the vSCSI DVD.

And yet another alternative approach: Clone the LUN at the SAN (or maybe SSP) level? Watch out for duplicate IP addresses on startup though - perform the first startup in an isolated environment.

BTW the HMC supports NIMOL (NIM on Linux) but this is only used to roll out your VIO servers. I don't think this can be used to install/clone AIX LPARs. Maybe with the new HMC version 8 (Enhanced+ interface) and/or PowerVC.

Originally posted by: hokusai

Thank you very much for your answers. I looked for the method of using a Linux server as TFTP/Bootp/NFS to mimic a NIM server however, I can not find an IBM document on this. Where did you find this information?

I currently have a mksysb (burned on a DVD). I want to restore this mksysb to another LPAR but I hesitate to when it presents the disks it will install to. Do I risk causing issues to my other LPARS if the mksysb is restored to this new LPAR which shares disks with the others?