AIX 7.1 to 7.2 upgrade
Posted on Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 15:23 by Hubertus A. Haniel
Note: This guide is not aimed as a step by step command reference as systems may be configured in different way - It is more of a reminder of the steps that are involved and it is still a work in progress guide.
One should familiarize themselves with the following articles:
The assumption is that we are working on an AIX server where rootvg is mirrored across hdisk0 and hdisk1. Just to ensure that the boot partitions are up to date it is advisable to execute "bosboot -ad /dev/hdisk0" and the same for hdisk1.
It should be ensured that we have an up to date mksysb or we should create one preferably on a NIM server that we can boot of and recover this image.
We will now have to break the rootvg mirror using "unmirrorvg rootvg hdisk1" which will now free up hdisk1.
Now we can use "alt_disk_copy -d hdisk1" to create an alternative rootdisk copy which is NOT a mirror but a copy in itself. - This will create a copy and set hdisk1 as a bootdisk.
After the copy has completed we can reboot the server and we should now see that hdisk1 has become the active rootvg and hdisk0 is in a volume group called old_rootvg.
While running on this rootvg copy we should upgrade any components that may need to be upgraded as a pre requisite to AIX 7.2 eg Veritas Filesystems if they are in use.
To do the migration to 7.2 we need to boot of the 7.2 boot media from NIM or CD/DVD and the NIM server may need to be prepped for that by adding the NIM client for a bos_install.
Once we are successfully booting of the media (remember the LED lights so you can see the process) we should be prompted on the console to press 1 to recognise that we are on the correct console. We may also be prompted for a language selection.
We should then be dropped into the install menu which by default should have chosen "Migration" rather then "Full install" - This can be checked in the advanced install configuration menu and one should also make sure that the correct disk is selected which in our case should be hdisk1 but the default may go for hdisk0 which we do not want to touch.
After the migration the server should then boot into AIX 7.2 on hdisk1 and once we have confirmed that everything is OK we can remove old_rootvg and fully remirror the disks not forgetting bosboot on all mirrors to make sure the boot sector is populated.
Edited on: Wed, Mar 13, 2024 15:55Posted in HowTo (RSS), System - AIX (RSS)
