Fast Installation of AIX on to IBM LPARs

An LPAR, or logical partition, is an IBM virtual machine. LPARs run on a variety of IMB hardware and provide strong isolation between partitions. This article describes a method for quickly building LPARs running AIX on IBM pSeries hardware

AIX can be installed onto an LAPR using the distribution CDs (or rather, since this is a virtual machine, the ISO image files derived from those physical CDs). There are, however, two drawbacks with this:

  • it does not include site specific customizations. If a piece of software like Apache or ssh is required on the LPAR, it must be installed separately – a pain if you have many LPARs to build.
  • it is a slow process. AIX is supplied spread over several CDs. The administrator must swap CDs several times during the installation. This means hanging around and typing commands needed to mount and dismount the cd ISO images on the target LPAR, something that will have to be done several times during the installation.

Continue reading