Re: Opinions sought moving LPARs to new CEC

On 04-Dec-2014 10:53 -0600, Mitchell, Dana wrote:

We are moving 8 IBM i 7.1 lpars from a P7 to a new P8 machine.
According to IBM, the process to use is SAVE 21 and restore as
described in Appendix D 'Recovering your system to a different
system' in the 'Recovering your System' manual.

My question relates to the fact that the existing lpars are at TR4
and thus won't run on P8 without at least TR8 applied. I was hoping
to avoid having to apply maintenance to all 8 LPARs before moving
them. I tried doing an install of 7.1 and all maintenance on the new
hardware, then just a Restore 23 User Data but that broke things
that was messy to clean up afterward.

Has anyone attempted anything similar and found an easier way?

On the target, install *only* the LIC and OS; do no install QUSRSYS or QGPL, do not do any GO LICPGM work. At this point the target system should consist of [beyond QSYS] just some empty libraries QUSRSYS, QGPL, and QSYS2, and a few nearly empty libraries such as QRECOVERY for sure and perhaps QRPLOBJ. Next do the Opt-21 restore. Finally, continue with the original [manual] installation from whence that process had been interrupted by the Opt-21 restore activity. Because the option-21 restore occurs into empty libraries, there are no conflicts; the quasi-user\quasi-system data is restored from the down-level system, thus avoiding issues for lost data and other /breakage/ that might be experienced trying to restore-over or choosing to restore only new objects\data.

The following documentation details this as a non-preferred process; opening text tries to dissuade the usage of that method, but then goes on to describe the steps at "This section provides instructions to restore data from a previous-release system to a later release system":

<http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/api/content/ssw_ibm_i_71/rzarm/rzarmsavallu.htm>
_Restoring previous release user data to a new system_
"The preferred method to restore previous release user data on your new, target system is to use the migration method.

The migration method asks you to first install the new, current release onto your old, source system. After which, you save your old system and then you perform a full system recovery onto the new, target system. Only use these instructions if it is not possible to perform the preferred migration process referenced in the _Data migrations_ topic.

This section provides instructions to restore user data from a previous-release system to a later release system. ...
..."