Re: Migrating extant system to new hardware

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