Re: Migrating extant system to new hardware

[DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have never hit a limit of virtual optical total capacity of the image 
catalog and I have migrated multi-TB systems this way.

The biggest thing is having enough disk space.

The second is enough network to push it all.

The third is a place to boot the new system from whether that is an 
image catalog on VIOS, a network based catalog on the existing system, 
or a physical disk. DO NOTE I have seen in this thread references to 
'far far away' and if you are trying to IPL from the network to install 
IBM i LIC using TFTP/NFS that is across the country that will with high 
probability fail across a WAN. It IS sensitive to latency. I do it 
across the state of MI but that's on dedicated private fiber with 4ms 
latency, It sometimes fails over the link to my home office with a 15ms 
latency. So be warned.

        - Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 12/20/2017 11:01 AM, Rob Berendt wrote:
> <snip>
> I have not researched inherent limit of virtual optical but I do like that
> idea of backing everything
> up and transmitting an image then installing raw from the image.  I've
> never done that, but it really works?
> Again, is there a limit to the size of the virt opt image?
> </snip>
>
> It's pretty darn big if there is a limit.
> Keep in mind that virtual optical is an "image catalog".  Very important
> term.
> Each "image catalog" has multiple "image catalog entries".
> I have one image catalog composed of 6 image catalog entries.  Each entry
> is between 1-4GB.  This is just the latest PTF cume and groups.
> Name                 Size
> CUME_1.bin          4,145,152K
> CUME_4.bin          3,801,088K
> CUME_5.bin          3,784,704K
> CUME_3.bin          3,407,872K
> CUME_6.bin          2,048,000K
> CUME_2.bin          1,392,640K
> I've done OS upgrades with a LOT more entries.
>
> I think there's a limit of 1TB on each image catalog entry.
> https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_ibm_i_73/rzamp/rzampother.htm
> You might want to verify that for 7.1.  Just change the dropdown on the
> left.
>
> Rob Berendt