Hypervisor support

You can use network adapter PCI functions with Linux® in LPAR or DPM partition mode or as a KVM or z/VM® guest.

In KVM or z/VM guests, you can connect to a PCI network adapter in two ways:

Pass-through: Linux hosted on the guest accesses the PCI function like Linux in LPAR mode by assigning a PCI function to the guest.
The host accesses the network adapter and provides virtualized interfaces to the guests. For example, z/VM VSWITCH provides virtual OSD channel devices to the z/VM guests while MacVTap or Open vSwitch provide virtio-net interfaces to the KVM guests.

For KVM, MacVTap and Linux bridge can be attached to a bonded interface. For Linux bridge the PCI functions that are used to create the bonded interface need to be in promiscuous mode. Open vSwitch requires promiscuous mode as well.

Working with PCI functions is similar regardless of how Linux is hosted. For example, you can configure for high availability through bonded interfaces on Linux in all environments.

Notes:

Other than OSA Express and OSH of Network Express® in hybrid mode, RoCE Express does not support z/VM VSWITCH technology to provide path redundancy.
Open vSwitch requires promiscuous mode and therefor can not be used with RoCE Express.