Creating a Virtual Optical drive in a HMC-Managed VIOS Partition

With HMC 7.3.4 SP2 or later these steps can be done from the HMC.

This document assumes there is already a server/client adapter pair created for the host and client partitions. If that is not the case you need to first create an adapter. The instructions can be found in the LPAR Guide: http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/topic/iphat/iphat.pdf in the section titled "Adding virtual adapters dynamically".

From HMC
From HMC

1. Select the server, then under Tasks -> Configuration->Virtual Resources->Virtual Storage Management :



2. Select the Optical Devices tab:



3. Assign the virtual media to the desired partition by selecting the media, going to the drop down for Select Action and selecting Modify Partition Assignment:



4. Select the partition you want to assign the media to:



5. The slot number is the SCSI adapter. Sometime you can have more than one slot number for each partition. If you are trying to keep disk and optical on separate adapters, you should pay close attention to the slot number.



Installing new Media into the Virtual Media Library using HMC GUI
Installing new Media into the Virtual Media Library using HMC GUI

1. FTP the .iso image to VIOS. When you log into VIOS, the default directory is /home/<user id>. Where user id is the User id you logged in as when you did the ftp. So if you logged in as padmin your directory will be /home/padmin.

2. In the Virtual Media Library import the media using the Add Media task. So click on select action and then select Add Media:



3. Then select Add existing file and specify the path to the file that you ftped:



Using VIOS command line for HMCs prior to 7.3.4 SP2
Using VIOS command line for HMCs prior to 7.3.4 SP2

1. VIOS (Virtual I/O Server) has a concept of a Virtual Media library where you store all your Virtual media. The first step is to check if the Virtual media Library already exists using the lsrep command:



2. If the Virtual media Library does not exist, you need to create it using the mkrep command. In our example, we are creating it as a 20 Gigabyte Virtual Media library in the rootvg storage pool:



3. FTP the .iso image to VIOS. When you log into VIOS, the default directory is /home/<userid>. Where userid is the User Id you logged into VIOS with when you did the ftp. So if you logged in as padmin the directory will be /home/padmin.

4. Use the following command to import the .iso image into the Virtual Media Library:



5. The command lsmap -all will show all mapped virtual adapters. For example:



6. Adapter 13 is the one I created for the virtual optical by using DLPAR, Virtual Adapter. You should select the option to create a SCSI adapter.



7. Next, create the virtual optical using the mkvdev -fbo -vadapter vhost2 command. This will create a File Backed Optical device:



8. Now we need to assign the image to the optical device using the loadopt command:



lsmap -all now shows the virtual optical mapped to the client adapter vhost2:



9. To access this virtual optical from a client partition, I need to create a client SCSI adapter in the client partition using either DLPAR or by updating the partition profile and activating from that profile.

10. To switch or unload the CD, use the command unloadopt -vtd vtopt0 .






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