PowerVC compatible "ready to deploy" images for AIX 7.1 TL 5 and AIX 7.2 TL 2
“In addition to installation images for AIX, "cloud" image formats are also made available that can be readily deployed with PowerVC. These images contain a default AIX base media install configuration that includes Cloud Init and its dependencies. The images can be obtained from the IBM Entitled System Support website or IBM Passport Advantage. For AIX 7.1 TL 5 SP0 and AIX 7.2 TL 2 SP0, the image files have the following names”.
When I discovered that IBM was now providing PowerVC "cloud ready" AIX images, I rushed to the IBM ESS site to download the new software!
http://www-304.ibm.com/servers/eserver/ess/index.wss
After the download, I noticed immediately that the image was not in ISO format. This was unexpected. It was, in fact, a raw disk image.
cgibson@Chriss-MacBook-Pro : ~/Downloads/POWER/aix/AIX72$ file -k AIX_v7.2_Virt_Mach_Image_7200-02-00_102017
AIX_v7.2_Virt_Mach_Image_7200-02-00_102017: x86 boot sector; partition 1: ID=0x41, starthead 255, startsector 4354, 25 sectors; partition 2: ID=0x41, active, starthead 255, startsector 4379, 55552 sectors, code offset 0xc2
So, I created a new volume in PowerVC (with my VIOS SSP storage provider) and used dd to copy the image to the new SSP volume.
p8vio1:/var/vio/SSP/xwing/D_E_F_A_U_L_T_061310/VOL1# dd if=/var/vio/VMLibrary/AIX_v7.2_Virt_Mach_Image_7200-02-00_102017 of=volume-AIXCloudVM-9a6ed2d1-dc50.796e28cc2b8fab3a98c204eaf711a54c bs=1M
20480+0 records in.
20480+0 records out.
Next, I deployed a new VM using the image I had just created.
Several minutes later, the VM was successfully deployed.
And I could connect to it over the network.
$ telnet 10.2.55.101
Trying...
Connected to pvc1.
Escape character is '^]'.
telnet (orion)
AIX Version 7
Copyright IBM Corporation, 1982, 2017.
login: root
*******************************************************************************
* *
* *
* Welcome to AIX Version 7.2! *
* *
* *
* Please see the README file in /usr/lpp/bos for information pertinent to *
* this release of the AIX Operating System. *
* *
* *
*******************************************************************************
Last unsuccessful login: Wed Dec 13 16:21:20 CST 2017 on ssh from 10.2.55.222
Last login: Wed Dec 13 16:21:30 CST 2017 on /dev/pts/0 from 10.2.55.222
#
# oslevel -s
7200-02-00-0000
And, as advertised, Cloud init was installed. I knew this already because without it, the VMs network interface wouldn't have been configured on deploy (and I would have had to configure it manually, post deploy).
# rpm -qa | grep cloud
cloud-init-0.7.5-4.3.ppc
To my surprise, YUM was also installed.
# yum repolist
repo id repo name status
AIX_Toolbox AIX generic repository 342
AIX_Toolbox_72 AIX 7.2 specific repository 10
AIX_Toolbox_noarch AIX noarch repository 79
repolist: 431
#
This new image is a great time saver, as I’ll no longer need to install Cloud init (or YUM for that matter) before I capture a new AIX image.
If you’re interested, here’s a list of all the RPMs included by default in the image.
# rpm -qa
tcl-8.4.7-3.ppc
expect-5.42.1-3.ppc
readline-6.1-2.ppc
python-requests-2.4.3-1.noarch
libyaml-0.1.4-2.ppc
gettext-0.19.7-1.ppc
yum-metadata-parser-1.1.4-2.ppc
db-4.8.24-3.ppc
pysqlite-1.1.7-2.ppc
python-cheetah-2.4.4-2.ppc
python-iniparse-0.4-1.noarch
python-jsonpatch-1.8-1.noarch
python-prettytable-0.7.2-1.noarch
python-setuptools-0.9.8-2.noarch
python-xml-0.8.4-1.ppc
curl-7.52.1-1.ppc
python-urlgrabber-3.10.1-1.noarch
cloud-init-0.7.5-4.3.ppc
python-devel-2.7.10-1.ppc
osinstall-1.6-1.noarch
tk-8.4.7-3.ppc
AIX-rpm-7.2.2.0-2.ppc
sqlite-3.15.2-1.ppc
python-argparse-1.2.1-1.noarch
python-PyYAML-3.11-1.ppc
glib2-2.14.6-2.ppc
gdbm-1.8.3-5.ppc
python-2.7.10-1.ppc
python-boto-2.34.0-1.noarch
python-configobj-5.0.5-1.noarch
python-jsonpointer-1.0-1.noarch
python-oauth-1.0.1-1.noarch
python-pyserial-2.7-1.ppc
python-six-1.10.0-1.noarch
ca-certificates-2016.10.7-2.ppc
python-pycurl-7.19.3-1.ppc
bash-4.3.30-1.ppc
yum-3.4.3-5.noarch
python-tools-2.7.10-1.ppc