In the meantime, CDs and DVDs are no longer used in the form of physical data media in most cases, but in the form of ISO images. These are files (usually with the extension .iso) that contain a complete file system in ISO format. These can easily be made available using a web server. For example, IBM provides ISO images for any software (including AIX and IOS) via the URL https://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/ess. (A valid software maintenance agreement and IBMid are required to download software.)

Note: How to download ISO images from the IBM website is described in our blog in more detail ( Download AIX ISO images from IBM ).

For the following examples, we downloaded the following ISO image from the mentioned IBM website and copied it to the padmin home directory on the virtual I/O server ms12-vio1:

-rw-r--r--    1 padmin  system   8114339840 Jan 31 15:11 AIX_v7.2_Install_7200-05-01-2038_flash_012021_LCD8236409.iso

A copy of this ISO image can be created in the Virtual Media Repository with the “vios mkmedia” command:

$ vios mkmedia ms12-vio1 AIX_720501_flash.iso \
/home/padmin/AIX_v7.2_Install_7200-05-01-2038_flash_012021_LCD8236409.iso ro
$

A look at the available virtual media (“vios lsmedia“) shows that the ISO image is now available in the Virtual Media Repository:

$ vios lsmedia ms12-vio1
NAME                  FILE SIZE  OPTICAL  ACCESS
AIX_720500_DVD_1.iso    3.56 GB  None     ro
AIX_720500_DVD_2.iso    4.00 GB  None     ro
AIX_720501_flash.iso    7.56 GB  None     ro
$

Note: The original file under /home/padmin can be deleted.

If the creation of the virtual media fails, insufficient free space in the Virtual Media Repository could be the cause. However, the Virtual Media Repository can be extended very easily, see “Extending the Virtual Media Repository”.