moving disks to another system

[Didier Couderc]

Hi,

We have 2 p520 systems that are used to test our software on AIX (we
are mainly on Linux and Windows).

Since moving to a new datacenter, we are unable to start one of these.
We have test data on this system that we would very much like to
extract and copy elsewhere (and of course no backups).

I was wondering if it is possible to move the disks from the failed
system to the other one and either start AIX from them or 'import' and
mount them under the other AIX ?

Regards,

ps : we have no maintenance or service contract with IBM (budget cuts)

--
Mog

[Tony]

If you're moving them to a similar piece of hardware, and the disks have
the right drivers installed, AIX is pretty good at dealing with that at
boot time, so you may be able to start them.

However, assuming they mechanically fit in the new machine, you can
absolutely mount them and extract data from them.

If everything is in rootvg, then you're probably better off trying to boot
from them, because importing them will be trickier (duplicate LV's and
Filesystems to handle), but if it's a separate VG, you might be okay.

man importvg
--
Tony Evans
Saving trees and wasting electrons since 1993
blog -> http://perceptionistruth.com/
books -> http://www.bookthing.co.uk/
[ anything below this line wasn't written by me ]

[Rick Ekblaw]

Didier Couderc wrote:
> We have test data on this system that we would very much like to
> extract and copy elsewhere (and of course no backups).

Just to add to Tony's reply: Yes, you can move the disks from the dead
p520 to the working one to retrieve your test data. Swap the entire
disk set, don't "mix and match" between the sets from the two machines.

This sounds harsh, but: The lack of backups indicates that *someone*
didn't feel that the data had any real value. Use this incident to
educate them and try to avoid another, more significant event in the future.

If you're feeling brave, you can use the working p520 to sequentially
diagnose the problem with the other. Once you've figured out the bad
part(s), you might get lucky and be able to repair the bad p520 "on the
cheap".