Specifications

286 IBM Flex System p260 and p460 Planning and Implementation Guide
Virtual adapters
Assigning and configuring virtual adapters requires more planning and design.
For virtual Ethernet adapters, the VLANs that the virtual servers require access
to must be considered. The VIOS provides bridging from the virtual Ethernet
adapter to the physical. Therefore, the virtual Ethernet adapter in the VIOS must
be configured with all of the VLANs that are required for the virtual servers in
the node.
For virtual storage access, either virtual SCSI or NPIV can be used. Virtual SCSI
adapters are configured in a client-server relationship, with the client adapter in
the client virtual server configured to refer to the server adapter configured in the
VIOS. The server adapter in the VIOS can be configured to refer to one client
adapter or allow any client to connect. NPIV configuration differs, in that the
VIOS serves as a pass-through module for a virtual Fibre Channel adapter in the
client virtual server. The SAN administrator assigns LUNs to the virtual Fibre
Channel adapters in the virtual servers, just as they would for a real Fibre
Channel adapter. The WWPNs are generated when the virtual Fibre Channel
adapter is defined for the client. This configuration can be provided to the SAN
administrator to ensure the LUNs are correctly mapped in the SAN.
Documenting the relationships between the VIOS and the client virtual servers
leads to correctly defined virtual adapters when you created the virtual servers
in FSM.
For more details about planning and configuring virtualized environments,
including configuring for availability, see IBM PowerVM Virtualization Introduction
and Configuration, SG24-7940.
For more information about planning and configuring a highly available virtual
environment, see IBM System p Advanced POWER Virtualization (PowerVM)
Best Practices, REDP-4194.
7.2 Creating the VIOS virtual server
Creating any virtual server requires basically the same steps. It is possible that
you create only AIX or Linux virtual servers on your Power Systems compute
node, but your options are limited by hardware, especially the expansion cards.
To use the virtualization capabilities of the compute node, use a VIOS. For this
reason, we focus on the creation of the VIOS.