Mounting Backup Storage

You can mount the following types of backup storage:

• Block device that represents a volume on a local disk or external drive on which the backup file resides. To learn more, see Mounting File System.
• Network shared folder — NFS or SMB (CIFS). To learn more, see Mounting Network Shared Folder.

Mounting File System

To mount a file system where the backup file resides, you must do the following using standard IBM AIX shell commands:

• Import the volume group that contains the logical volume with the backup file.

• Rename the logical volumes and file systems in the imported volume groups to avoid name conflict during data restore.
• Create a mount point.
• Mount the file system with the backup file to the mount point directory.

Mounting Network Shared Folder

Depending on the version of your IBM AIX OS and the file system type of the network shared folder — NFS or SMB (CIFS) — syntax for mounting a network folder may vary. For more information on using the mount command in your specific OS environment, see IBM AIX documentation.

If the backup that you want to use for bare metal recovery resides in an SMB (CIFS) network shared folder, consider the following:

• IBM AIX OS does not provide native support of SMB (CIFS) protocol and needs additional packages installed to handle it. During bare metal recovery, you can mount an SMB (CIFS) shared folder only if SMB (CIFS) support was implemented on the original system.
• Prior to mounting an SMB (CIFS) shared folder to the recovery image OS file system, you must create an nsmb0 device by running the /SPOT/usr/bin/smbd-start script in the recovery environment. After you execute the script, you can mount an SMB (CIFS) folder using the standard mount command.