System information

Chapter 14. Firmware maintenance 427
14.1.4 HMC backup of critical console data
We recommend taking a backup of the HMCs Critical Console Data (CCD) before proceeding
with the HMC upgrade process. This backup will save all the HMC user data, user
preferences, any partition profile data backup on the HMC disk, and various log files.
Figure 14-5 Critical Console Data Backup
There are three methods of backing up the HMC CCD:
򐂰 Back up to DVD on the local system.
򐂰 Send the backup critical data to the remote site (FTP).
򐂰 Back up to the mounted remote system (NFS).
In this section we show how to back up the CCD to the local HMC DVD drive and to a remote
i5/OS FTP server.
Important: The backup CCD is not a complete save of the HMC, as it contains user data
as well as any system updates/fixes since the last install or upgrade from the HMC
recovery CDs. If you need to reinstall the HMC from scratch, you must use the original IBM
HMC recovery CDs and then restore the CCD backup.
For example, Figure 14-5 shows two HMCs (
A and B) that follow the two possible HMC
upgrade paths.
HMC
A was installed with the V4R4 recovery cd set and then upgraded to V4R5 using the
V4R5 corrective service update packages. The next CCD backup will save all your user
data as well as all the updates installed since V4R4. In this case the CCD backup would be
over 1GB in size.
HMC
B was installed with the V4R4 recovery CD set and then upgraded to V4R5 using the
V4R5 recovery cd set. The next CCD backup will save all your user data as well as all the
updates installed since the last install/upgrade from the recovery cd set (V4R5). In this
case the CCD backup could be less than 100 MB in size.