HP Integrity Virtual Machines 4.2: Installation, Configuration, and Administration

for communication among VIO guest devices registered with the same vswitch. This type of
vswitch is typically referred to as localnet. For more information, see Section 8.2.1.1 (page 130).
Unlike VIO guest networks, traffic from an AVIO guest LAN network device is directed to the
pNIC directly by a separate host module rather than by the vswitch. In addition, AVIO does not
support localnet type vswitch, because each AVIO guest device must have a backing of the
host physical device.
You can create vswitches before or after creating guests that access the vswitches. If you create
the virtual machine before creating the vswitch, the virtual machine is created and warning
messages display the specific problem. This allows you to create virtual machines for future
configurations.
To create a vswitch, enter the hpvmnet -c command. Include the -S option to specify the name
of the virtual switch. For example:
# hpvmnet -c -S vswitch-name -n nic-id
where:
• vswitch-name is the name you assign to the vswitch. You must specify the name of the
vswitch.
• nic-id is the pNIC ID on the VM Host. If you omit the nic-id, the vswitch is created for
the localnet.
To start the vswitch, enter the hpvmnet -b command. For example:
# hpvmnet -b -S vswitch-name
For more information about using the hpvmnet command, see Section 8.2.1 (page 128).
To create the virtual machine and allocate the vswitch to it, use the -a option to the hpvmcreate
command. For example:
# hpvmcreate -P vm-name -a network:adapter-type:[hardware-address]:vswitch:vswitch-name
where hardware-address (optional) is the vNIC PCI bus number, device, and MAC address.
If you omit the hardware address, it is generated for you. HP recommends that you allow this
information to be automatically generated. In this case, omit the hardware-address value
from the command line, but retain the colon character separator. For example:
# hpvmcreate -P vm-name -a network:adapter-type:vswitch:vswitch-name
The adapter-type can be either lan or avio_lan.
On the guest, use standard operating commands and utilities to associate the vNIC with an IP
address, or use DHCP just as you would for a physically independent machine.
By default, vswitches are sharable; you can allocate the same vswitch to multiple virtual machines.
Virtual LANs allow virtual machines to communicate with other virtual machines using the
same VLAN, either on the same VM Host or on different VM Host systems. You associate the
VLAN port number with a vswitch, then allocate that vswitch to virtual machines that
communicate on that VLAN. For more information about HP-UX VLANs, see the manual Using
HP-UX VLANs.
NOTE: If the guest is configured with a number of VLAN devices, but it does not have sufficient
memory, some of the devices might be missing after the guest is booted. To resolve this issue,
increase the size of the guest memory with the hpvmmodify -r command.
For more information about creating and managing VLANs on virtual switches, see Section 8.4
(page 134).
3.2.7.2 Creating Virtual Storage Devices
When you create a virtual machine, you specify the virtual storage devices that the virtual machine
uses. Virtual storage devices are backed by physical devices on the VM Host system (backing
48 Creating Virtual Machines