AIX 4.3 Alternate Disk Install

Audience: AIX Administrators

Date: December 18, 1999
Updated: April 14, 2003

AIX's "Alternate Disk Install" allows the operating system to be installed on an alternate disk while running production The installation can install from a mksysb image, or cloned from the current rootvg. Updates can be applied as part of the installation process. Once the installation is complete, reboot the system to the new OS.

The advantages include:

1. Minimize downtime for updates
2. Boot multiple OS versions
3. Back out path (reboot to original disk)
4. Can be used in conjunction with NIM

The "Alternate Disk Installation" is part of base AIX. However, it is not installed by default. The two prereq install filesets are:
bos.alt_disk_install.boot_images
bos.alt_disk.install.rte

For more information, see:
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1150/sam0106se/0106e.htm
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/doc_link/en_US/a_doc_lib/aixins/aixinsgd/alternate_disk_inst.htm