Prepare for virtual optical storage

This topic provides information about meeting the requirements for virtual tape storage and preparing to use it.

To prepare to use virtual optical storage, you need to consider these items:

Parent topic: Start of changeVirtual optical storageEnd of change
Related tasks
Clean up disk storage space
Related reference
Work with Disk Status (WRKDSKSTS)
Related information
iSeries Security Reference

How much disk space you have

Because virtual images are stored on your disk units, they can quickly use disk space. It is essential that you determine whether you have enough disk space. The smallest allowable size for a optical image file volume is 48 MB. The largest allow able size is 16 GB.

To determine how much disk space you have, do the following:

  1. In iSeries™ Navigator, expand My Connections > your iSeries server > Configuration and Service > Hardware > Disk Units > Disk Pools.
  2. Right-click the disk pool you want to view, and select Properties.
  3. Select the Capacity page.

    The Capacity page displays the used space, free space, total capacity, threshold, and percentage of disk space used for the disk pool.

    You can also use the Work with Disk Status (WRKDSKSTS) command to determine your free space.

If you need to clean up disk space, see Clean up disk storage space.

The number of volumes of virtual images you need

To determine how many volumes you need, do the following:
  1. Determine the how much data you are going to store.
  2. Determine the size of each virtual image. You can determine the size based on what you want to do with the optical image file. For example, if are going to copy the optical image files to a CD, the largest you can make the volumes is 650 MB.
  3. Divide the amount of data you are going to store by the size of your volumes. For example, if you plan to save 1 GB of data, and you want to copy your volumes to a CD, you need to create two volumes.

Consideration for full backups

If you are doing a full backup, the first volume must be at least 1489 MB because the first volume must be large enough to store the Licensed Internal Code. The remaining volumes can be smaller than 1489 MB.

Authority needed to create virtual images

You must have security administrator (*SECADM) and all object (*ALLOBJ) special authorities to use the commands required to create virtual images.