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”.

 

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en_us#!/wiki/Power%20Systems/page/AIX%202017%20TL%20Release%20Overview%20and%20Related%20Software%20Updates

 

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

 

Tags:  powervc cloud ready 7.2 images 7.1 aix