Virtual serial adapters

Virtual serial adapters provide a point-to-point connection from one logical partition to another, or from the Hardware Management Console (HMC) to each logical partition on the managed system. Virtual serial adapters are used primarily to establish terminal or console connections to logical partitions.

When you create a logical partition, the HMC automatically creates two virtual server serial adapters on the logical partition. These virtual server serial adapters allow you to establish a terminal or console connection to the logical partition through the HMC.

You can also create pairs of virtual serial adapters on logical partitions so that you can access and control one logical partition directly from another logical partition. For example, one logical partition uses the disk resources of another logical partition using virtual SCSI adapters. You can create a server serial adapter on the logical partition that uses the disk resources and a client serial adapter on the logical partition that owns the disk resources. This connection allows the logical partition that owns the disk resources to shut down the logical partition that uses the disk resources before you back up data on the logical partition that owns the disk resources.

On HMC-managed systems, virtual serial adapters are created and assigned to logical partitions using partition profiles.