This method works fine, however, I'm wondering if backing up the page packs is necessary? I was thinking that maybe I could backup only 1 page pack so that I can get z/vm up and then just init the remaining packs after coming up.
I've done it both ways. If you have flashcopy in the disk hardware, the "back up one, flash the others, clip the labels with DDR" is really, really efficient, and trivially easy to automate (at one site, we ran that way normally - made it really easy to avoid the "write one page at IPL on a page pack and then you can't drain it" problem discussed here recently). Just make sure that you have a short delay in your AUTOLOG1 startup (or do the flash/clip in AUTOLOG1) so you can stop the whole system from initializing before the page packs are online - running out of page space during IPL is kinda icky. You do need to back up a fully-formatted page pack (processed with CPVOL FORMAT) because you'll get paging errors and weird horrible flaming deaths that are really hard to find if the pack is not completely CP formatted. Since the page packs are listed as cpvols in system config, would z/vm even come up if it couldn't find all of them? For PAGE space, z/VM is perfectly happy to come up without them (as long as you have lots of RAM or at least one PAGE area available). SPOL packs are the ones you REALLY care about having all the pieces. At DR site, we bring up a z/os "rescue" system in order to run restore jobs for both z/os and z/vm volumes. Afterwards, our z/vm and z/os systems run as second level guests. Maybe I need a "rescue" z/vm system as well? We do it the other way around - z/VM first, then z/OS and the other guests. A 1 pack z/VM system is very quick to restore and will let you bring up multiple z/OS guest systems and the restore will go much easier. With a little thought, you can automate the whole process with an exec - it leads to lots of amusement during DR when you load 1 or 2 tapes, IPL VM and just sit there drinking coffee while everyone else does fire-drill. 8-)
