IBM p5 550 Technical Overview And Introduction

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34 p5-550 Technical Overview and Introduction2.10.1 Advanced POWER Virtualization featureThe Advanced POWER Virtualization feature is a hardware feature (FC 7941 for the p5-550)that is available as an option on all IBM Sserver POWER5 processor-based systems. TheAdvanced POWER Virtualization feature is a combination of hardware enablement forMicro-partitions and software that supports the Virtual I/O environment on POWER5processor-based systems.The Advanced POWER Virtualization feature includes: Firmware enablement for Micro-partitions Installation image for the Virtual I/O server software that supports:– Ethernet adapter sharing– Virtual SCSI server Partition Load Manager2.10.2 Virtual I/O serverThe Virtual I/O server is a special purpose partition to provide virtual I/O resources to clientpartitions. The Virtual I/O server owns the real resources that will be shared with the otherclients. The Virtual I/O technology allows a physical adapter assigned to a partition to beshared by one or more partitions, enabling clients to minimize their number of physicaladapters. Virtual I/O will be used to reduce costs by eliminating the requirement that eachMicro-partition has a dedicated network adapter, disk adapter, and disk drive.It is preferred that you use the Virtual I/O server in a partition with dedicated resources to helpensure stable performance.Three major functions are provided from the Virtual I/O Server, as described in the followingsections.Virtual EthernetTo enhance intercommunication between partitions, either dedicated partitions orMicro-partitions, Virtual Ethernet allows in-memory connections at a high bandwidth frompartition to partition. Virtual Ethernet working on LAN technology allows a transmission speedin the range of 1 to 3 GB/sec depending on the MTU4 size. Virtual Ethernet connections (upto 256) are supported in a partition, where a single Virtual Ethernet resource can beconnected to another Virtual Ethernet, a real network adapter, or both in a partition.Shared Ethernet adapterThe Shared Ethernet adapter is a new service that acts as a layer 2 network switch to routenetwork traffic from a Virtual Ethernet to a real network adapter. The Shared Ethernet Adaptermust run in a Virtual I/O Server partition.The advantages of the virtual Ethernet services is that partitions to communicate outside thesystem without having a physical network adapter attached to the partition. At the time ofwriting, up to 16 Virtual Ethernet x 18 VLANs can be shared on a single network interface.The amount of network traffic will limit the number of client partitions served through a singlenetwork interface.4 Maximum Transmission Unit