How to backup VIOS in AIX

BACKUP OF VG STRUCTURE :

You can backup the structure of any volume group so that the configuration data will be stored under /tmp/vgdata. This will be automatically done if you run backupios (and even the configuration data will be automatically backed up).

Here are some commands.

To backup the structure of datavg :
# savevgstruct datavg

To display a list of saved volume groups
# restorevgstruct -ls

To restore the structure of datavg on 2 available disks :
# restorevgstruct -vg datavg hdisk2 hdisk3



BACKUP OF USER-DEFINED VIRTUAL DEVICES :

You can take a backup of all the user-defined virtual devices using the viobr command. But it requires minimum VIOS level 2.1.2.0.  Backup file includes logical devices like storage pools, SEA, virtual server SCSI/FC/Ethernet adapters, device attributes for disks, optical devices, tape devices, LHEA, ethernet devices/interfaces.

Here are some commands

To take a backup of user-defined virutal devices in an XML file :
# viosbr -backup -file filename

To view the backup information :
# viosbr -view -file filename

To restore the virtual device configuration :
# viosbr -restore -file filename

To validate the backup file :
# viosbr -restore -validate -file filename


BACKUP OF VO SERVER :

To perform backup on a tape media :
# backupios -tape /dev/rmt0

To perform backup on a DVD media :
# backupios -cd /dev/cd0 -udf

To perform backup on a DVD-RAM disk :
# backupios -cd /dev/cd0 -udf -accept

To take backup on a file (Creates a file called nim_resources.tar) :
# backupios -file /mnt

To perform mksysb backup :
# backupios -file /mnt/vioserver1.mksysb -mksysb