Edit: I still find customers that are not taking good backups. Some links no longer work.
Originally posted October 4, 2011 on AIXchange
Once you’ve set up your VIO server (VIOS), mapped the disks and configured everything, one question remains. How are you going to back up those settings? The answer is the viosbr command. I wrote about this back in January 2010, but I’m not sure how many people are using it. You’ll find much more about viosbr here.
From the website:
“[Viosbr] performs the operations for backing up the virtual and logical configuration, listing the configuration and restoring the configuration of the Virtual I/O Server. The viosbr command can be run only by the padmin user.
“This viosbr command backs up all the relevant data to recover a Virtual I/O Server after a new installation. The -backup parameter backs up all the device properties and the virtual devices configuration on the Virtual I/O Server. This includes information regarding logical devices, such as storage pools, file-backed storage pools, the virtual media repository and PowerVM Active Memory Sharing (AMS) paging devices. It also includes the virtual devices, such as Etherchannel, shared Ethernet adapters (SEAs), virtual server adapters and server virtual fibre channel (SVFC) adapters.
“Additionally, it includes the device attributes, such as the attributes for disks, optical devices, tape devices, fibre channel SCSI controllers controllers, Ethernet adapters, Ethernet interfaces and logical Host Ethernet Adapters (HEAs). All the configuration information is saved in a compressed XML file. If a location is not specified with the -file option, the file is placed in the default location /home/padmin/cfgbackups if the user does not specify a full path for saving the file. This command can be run once or can be run in a stipulated period of time by using the -frequency parameter with the daily, weekly, or monthly option. Daily backups occur at 00:00, weekly backups on Sunday at 00:00, and monthly backups on the first day of the month at 00:01. The -numfile parameter specifies the number of successive backup files that will be saved, with a maximum value of 10. After reaching the given number of files, the oldest backup file is deleted during the next backup cycle. The format of the file name is .xx.tar.gz, where xx starts from 01.
“The viosbr command does not back up the parent devices of adapters or drivers, device drivers, virtual serial adapters, virtual terminal devices, kernel extensions, the Internet Network Extension (inet0), virtual I/O bus, processor, memory, or cache.
“The -view parameter displays the information of all the backed up entities in a formatted output. This parameter requires an input file in a compressed or noncompressed format that is generated with the -backup parameter. The -view parameter uses the option flags type and detail to display information in detail or to display minimal information for all the devices or for a subset of devices. The -mapping option flag provides lsmap-like output for Virtual Small Computer System Interface (VSCSI) server adapters, SEA, SVFC adapters and PowerVM Active Memory Sharing paging devices. The entities can be controllers, disks, optical devices, tape devices, network adapters, network interfaces, storage pools, repositories, Etherchannels, Shared Ethernet Adapters, VSCSI server adapters, SVFC adapters and paging devices. The -list option displays backup files from the default location /home/padmin/cfgbackups or from a user-specified location.”
Although viosbr is great for capturing mappings etc, you must still run the backupios command if you plan on creating a mksysb of the vios root volume group from your VIOS.
Although you may be backing up your client LPARs, you should also be backing up your VIOS.