Restoring mksysb to vio lpar?

I have a standard template I deploy for each of my AIX servers. It's in a mksysb format which I pulled via the nim server after I originally set it up.

I'm trying to restore this mksysb over the wire to a remote system. The remote system is an lpar running under vio (no HMC attached). The disk structure is a disk pool of which I've pulled xG from the pool for this lpar.

The problem I'm running into is the SMS menu doesn't recognize the virtual disk. Therefore, when I try to boot from the network, the mksysb comes back and tells me there are no disks to restore to. The only way I have been able to see the virtual disk is when booting/installing from CD.

How can I get the lpar(s)/SMS to see the virtual disk to perform a restore of a mksysb?

Are you absolutely sure that your VIO server and LPAR profile are setup correctly? The problem I have seen most is that the slot numbers don't match up between the LPAR and VIO server.

When you do the "lsmap -all" as padmin you should be able to see the disk assigned to the vhost number of the LPAR. Check the slot there. It is in the "vhost#" line that looks like this (this one is "28"):

vhost17         U9117.570.1000000-V40-C28                    0x00000010

After you have this number, verify the slot number in the LPAR's profile.

I have done this numerous times on our p570 LPARs. We have redundant paths to the disks through two vio servers though and I can see both paths in the SMS menu when I go to restore a mksysb.