IBM Support

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

Troubleshooting


Problem

This document describes how to create a virtual optical drive within VIOS when it is an HMC-managed partition.

Resolving The Problem

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



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

    This is a screen shot of the configuration tasks from the HMC.

    1A. Select the VIOS partition to query

    2. Select the Optical Devices tab:

    This is a screen shot of the Virtual Storage Management screen from the HMC.

    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:

    This is a screen shot fo the Optical Devices tab on the Virtual Storage Management screen.

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

    This is a screen shot of the Modify Virtual Media Partition Assignment screen.

    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



    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:

    Screen shot of the Virtual Storage management screen from HMC.

    3. Then select Add existing file and specify the path to the file that you ftped:
    Enter the media name like "AIX 7100-04-03" and "Optical Media File Name" as this should contain the actual path to the iso-file.

    naming2

  • - 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:

    This is a screen shot of running lsrep command from VIOS command line.

    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:

    This is a screen shot of the mkrep -sp rootvg -size 20G command and it's results.

    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:

    This is a screen shot of  the mkvopt command in VIOS.  Command is mkvopt -name R610_RSD.iso -file /home/padmin/R610_RSD.iso.

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

    This is a screen shot showing the of the results from running the lsmap -all command.

    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.

    This is a screen shot of the Create Virtual SCSI Adapter screen on the HMC.

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

    This is a screen shot of running the mkvdev command in VIOS.

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

    This is a screen shot of the loadopt command in VIOS.

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

    This is a screen shot of lsmap -all output showing Backing device as the Virtual Media Library.

    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.



Note:  If you want to DM IPL the partition from the virtual optical you would tag the virtual adapter as the alternate restart device in the partition profile.  So in this example you would make the alternate restart device Client SCSI slot 2.

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Historical Number

515142855

Document Information

Modified date:
24 May 2023

UID

nas8N1013168