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Question

1-Touch recovery using ISO images written to USB flash drive

  • 28 December 2022
  • 6 replies
  • 694 views
Jozsef
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Hello,

This question is specifically aimed at the 1-Touch recovery process for an IBM i client, but may be applicable to other client types.

The save of the system portion (SAVSYS) will create up to nine [4.27GB] ISO image files that are then individually ‘burned’ to DVDs for use by the 1-Touch Recovery process. The first ISO image file [DVD] will be used for the initial boot of a system, with the remainder of the ISO image files used for the install of the base operating system and other objects that will get the system to the stage where it can communicate with CommVault to complete the restore of the entire system.

With this many ISO image files it is quite cumbersome and time consuming having to burn nine ISO images to DVD. Likewise using this many DVDs for a recovery is a slow process.

IBM Power9 servers have a USB3 port that can be switched and allocated to an individual IBM i LPAR as a virtual optical device, allowing a USB flash drive to be used as a boot device. Hence my question - is there an option or is CommVault considering the use USB flash drives instead of DVD where all ISO image files could potentially be burned to one USB flash drive?  

 

Thanks,

Jozsef

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 replies

christopherlecky
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You may want to look into a pxe server rather than doing it that way.

It’s harder to intially configure but once configured it is much easier to maintain.

I blame auto-correct for all misspellings, grammatical errors, and half-baked opinions.
Damian Andre
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You may want to look into a pxe server rather than doing it that way.

It’s harder to intially configure but once configured it is much easier to maintain.

This is a great solution. I’ll check internally to see if any requests for USB booting has been suggested.

 

I don’t know much about IBM-i but wondering if a tool like rufus could be used to convert your ISO images to USB boot? I have done this several times for ESXi and windows machines.

christopherlecky
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You may want to look into a pxe server rather than doing it that way.

It’s harder to intially configure but once configured it is much easier to maintain.

This is a great solution. I’ll check internally to see if any requests for USB booting has been suggested.

 

I don’t know much about IBM-i but wondering if a tool like rufus could be used to convert your ISO images to USB boot? I have done this several times for ESXi and windows machines.

Fun fact, at one point Commvault used to suggest using 1-touch in conjunction with pxe and iirc specifically the Microsoft PXE implementation. My guess is that they moved away from that because Microsofts PXE implementation was so arcane and complex that it’s basically impossible to support from a third party vendor pov, luckily there are a few alternative pxe providers now, that make the process significantly simpler.

I blame auto-correct for all misspellings, grammatical errors, and half-baked opinions.
christopherlecky
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That said, I just realized that strictly speaking I didn’t answer the question.

 

The answer is yes, but no.

Can you theoretically load multiple boot images onto a single usb drive?

Yes, but it would require knowledge of boot loaders and boot images that you aren’t going to find just casually, and doing it yourself, would be a herculean endeavor, there are tools that can transfer a single iso boot image to a single usb stick, but even those I have found to be very hit and miss.

 

Pxe can create a network boot menu, that essentially loads a list of boot options that can be backended using your iso files, and believe it or not it’s probably significantly easier than the USB boot method.

 

It has its own downsides in terms of networking requirements, but all in all it’s simply a no brainer solution if it is an option.

My personal advice is to stay away from the Microsoft implementation. I’m pretty sure I caused myself brain damage at some point trying to get PXE and WinPE to work properly back in the day.

I blame auto-correct for all misspellings, grammatical errors, and half-baked opinions.
christopherlecky
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One other alternative I keep forgetting about is ipmi. 

This is actually the drop dead easiest option, if you have ipmi configured in your environment, then you can mount the iso from a shared network path and just be done with it.

ipmi, comes in many names. For Dell servers they call it iDrac, for HP they call it iLO

Pretty sure it’s supported by pretty much everyone but they all give it different names.

 

Hell you can probably script it using ipmi tools

 

I blame auto-correct for all misspellings, grammatical errors, and half-baked opinions.
Jozsef
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Hi guys, 

Thank you very much for your responses. 

I think I can do without the risk of potential brain damage. 😉 

To clarify about the ‘multiple boot images on a single usb drive’, an IBM i client’s SAVSYS creates multiple ISO image files where only the first image file contains the boot software, or what we call Licensed Internal Code (‘LIC’). The remainder of the up to a total of nine image files contain the Operating System software, security data (user profiles etc), configuration objects like comms lines and display device descriptions, the base CommVault product libraries, other IBM libraries for various IBM i Licensed Program Products (‘LPPs’), and various other system libraries and files. all this would be restored to get to the point where the IBM i system can communicate with the CommVault server and begin the restore of all user data.     

In theory all the ISO image files should be able to be loaded onto a single USB drive, then be able to boot from the LIC image, followed by a restore of everything else as described above. This would be similar to how an OS upgrade is implemented where the OS upgrade LIC, OS and LPPs image files are all stored in what we call an Image Catalog that is then mounted on a virtual optical device. The Image Catalog and virtual optical device are both configured on the IBM i system. We then IPL (reboot) the system telling it to restart from the virtual optical device. Hey presto.  

Of course initiating a full system recovery is not the same as a OS upgrade where we specify ahead of time that the system is to execute a normal IPL (restart) from the virtual optical device and press the Enter button. 

For a full system recovery the system has crashed with an unrecoverable fault. But in that situation we can specify that the system is to restart from an Alternate IPL Device. This is done via what is called an Hardware Management Console (HMC) that is a stand-alone server for the management of the physical [Power9] server and the IBM i systems (what you may know as Virtual Machines and what we call Logical Partitions in IBM i land) hosted on the server.  

In saying this, one thing we will need to check is if the format of the image files created on CommVault are the same as the format of the OS upgrade image files we download from IBM, Something we can test on our sandbox IBM i system.  

Re the IPMI option, interesting.  I have been playing with IPMI provided by the HMCs we have that we use to manage our two Power9 servers and IBM i LPARs. These HMCs are actually IBM Power8 servers.  And just last week I was considering whether the Power9 servers also have the IPMI capability. Something to check out.  

 

Hey, it is good to talk this through with you.  We may be onto something here...  

 

Thanks guys,

Jozsef

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