There seems to be several ways of doing this.  The first approach is a
one-liner to allow tar to reference another machine's device.  The
second is more complete but uses a similar approach.  The latest
addition to this section claims to be able to support mksysb on a
remote machine.  Thanks to all the contibutors.

  tar -b1 -cf - . | rsh REMOTEHOST "dd ibs=512 obs=1024 of=/dev/TAPEDEVICE"

[Ed.: The usave.sh script has been moved to section 8.06.  I've verified
this script works fine. However, it may be slow for large filesystems
since it creates a temp file of filenames in /tmp.]

There are also several commercial solutions.  One is IBM's SYSBACK/6000
product.  See Question 1.209 for more information.

Open Microsystems sells a product called DistribuTAPE which supports
mksysb to a remote tape drive under AIX 3.2, 4.1 and 4.2.  DistribuTAPE
supports remote tape drives by placing a pseudo tape driver on the
client system, and a server daemon on the server.  More information at
http://www.openmic.com/

Some parts © 2009 Advameg, Inc.