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The Why and How of Load Sharing for VIOS Shared Ethernet Adapters
Here are some helpful resources on setting up Shared Ethernet Adapters. If you've worked with dual Virtual I/O Servers (VIOS), you've most likely got experience with Shared Ethernet Adapters (SEAs). You can set them up in failover mode or using the more recent load sharing . With failover, the Ethernet adapters on the backup SEA (for example, on VIO server 2) sit idle until there is a planned or unplanned failure on VIOS1's SEA. In other words, SEAs in failover mode is a binary configuration: if SEA on VIOS1 is up, then your physical Ethernet... [More]
Tags: vios tagging vlan load_sharing failover shared_ethernet_adapter load_balancing virtual_io_server |
vscsi Disks on the Loose: Map 'em or Scrap 'em!
SPOILT BY VIRTUALISATION We're really spoiled with virtualisation. It's so easy for us to map a LUN or a logical volume and build an LPAR, then load an operating system onto it. This makes it easy for temporary, test systems to be built and never get cleaned up. Why is that? Simple. It's because <!--
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There's
nothing so permanent as a temporary solution. Removing an LPAR that you no longer want to use is easy... [More]
Tags: vio_server lspv virtual_io_server vios lslv aix lsmap vscsi |
VIOS - switching between padmin and root
One of the benefits of the Virtual I/O server is the predictability of its commands. Commands to list something start with ls and device names are prefixed with the pretty guessable -dev In fact, I once wrote an article in praise of the VIOS command line interface (CLI). But [language warning] boy, oh boy, do I find it confusing remembering whether I'm using the restricted shell (logged in as the user padmin ) or switching to the full-blooded, no decaf, root access.... [More]
Tags: ibm padmin vios ibm_i virtual_io_server aix oem_setup_env i |
Shared Ethernet Adapter: Load Sharing or Virtual Switches?
For network redundancy, you can set up two Shared Ethernet Adapters (SEAs) - one on each Virtual I/O Server (VIOS). The two SEAs work together with one active, the other idle, so the configuration is called failover mode. This is done by a control channel - a heartbeat that works through a virtual ethernet adapter on each SEA. The failover mode is very effective, because it allows you to shut down a single VIOS and automatically have the other SEA on the alternate VIOS take the traffic. With failover mode you can use VLAN tagging, something not... [More]
Tags: virtual_io_server load_sharing shared_ethernet_adapter sea vios virtual_switch |
Upgrading a very, very, very old VIOS
This is the epic of the upgrade for the Virtual I/O server (VIOS) from version 1.4 to version 2.2. It's not a pleasant read, so if you're of a weak stomach, just skip the whole blog post, but note two things when it comes to VIOS and firmware upgrades: Always read the README Consider a fresh install of the VIOS The Epic Begins Much as we'd like all our systems to be running
the newest and latest of everything, most of us are not so lucky.
There are still some very old environments out there, running on old
hardware. I suppose it's a... [More]
Tags: concurrent vios upgrade 2.2 hmc updateios firmware virtual_io_server migration 1.4 disruptive |
Could a vanilla VIOS installation be simplified?
If only a VIO server could be a VSCSI client ... A vanilla installation of the VIO server is very easy - once you can get
the LPAR to access the installation files. But that's the part which can be unnecessarily cumbersome and time consuming. Sure, you can use a physical Virtual I/O server installation DVD, but
that means getting the DVD to a data centre - and probably you with it.
Now if you're in a lab setting, or have a data centre across the floor from where you sit, that may not be any issue at all. But
for many of us, getting into... [More]
Tags: virtual_media_repository hmc installios install vscsi vios vanilla virtual_media_library virtual_io_server |
