Edit: This should still be relevant. Link no longer works.
Originally posted September 4, 2012 on AIXchange
Recently I received a reader question that prompted this email exchange with IBM network installation management (NIM) expert Steve Knudson.
Reader: I currently have one NIM server that I use to recover all of our AIX systems. We will be moving from P5 to P7 hardware, but I will no longer have a tape drive to back up my NIM server to. Nor will I have a DVD writable drive. What I need to know is how can I back up my NIM server to a mksysb file and recover my NIM server from that. I believe that I can’t use the NIM master backup to recover itself to a different LPAR somewhere, correct? Am I going to need an alternate NIM server to recover my NIM master? Do you have a documented procedure somewhere on how to accomplish this? Any help that you could provide on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Steve’s reply: The way I would approach this….
1) Take a backup of the NIM database into a file in rootvg on the NIM master.
2) Collect mksysb of master, to itself.
3) NIM restore mksysb to new POWER7 LPAR, and in the process, make the question:
Remain NIM client after install? [no]
This eliminates the check and removal of bos.sysmgt.nim.master, nim.spot filesets.
4) After the restore, copy to the POWER7 the various lpp_source, scripts, bosinst_data, resolv_conf resources you want to preserve.
5) On the POWER7 LPAR, run the nim_master_recover command to restore the NIM database on the new LPAR. It will likely look for the copied resources in the exact path and filenames they had on the P5 LPAR.
This restores a backup of the NIM database to a different machine and updates the database to reflect
this change.
If you were planning on changing IP and hostname on the P5, and then setting IP and hostname of P7 LPAR to what the P5 had, you might be able to just restore the NIM database backup on the P7, without nim_master_recover.
Customer reply: Thanks for your response. I have a couple of questions though. So I would need to specify a different hostname and IP address to recover to on the POWER7? Then once I’m ready to shut it down (LPAR on P5), after copying all the lpp_source stuff and scripts, can I rename the POWER7 LPAR with the same hostname and ip address as the one that was on the P5?
I also assume I wouldn’t do the nim_master_recover until the P7 LPAR is updated with the original hostname and ip address?
Steve’s reply: If you want to move the hostname and IP to the new P7 NIM master LPAR, I would restore the mksysb, change hostname and IP on original P5 and then set hostname and IP on the new P7 LPAR. After that, I would restore the NIM database on the P7 and not do nim_master_recover.
Customer reply: How would I restore the master NIM database?
Steve’s reply: smitty nim > Perform NIM administration tasks > Backup/Restore the NIM Database.
Backup/Restore the NIM Database.
Move cursor to desired item and press Enter.
Backup the NIM Database.
Restore the NIM Database from a Backup.
This is where you collect the backup of the NIM database on P5 to start, and also where you’ll restore the NIM database on the P7.
Thus ends the exchange. So have you tried this? Has it been successful? Please share your experiences in Comments.