Long story short – how regular VIOS update ended with few weeks investigations completed with the serious VIOS bug and the APAR (IJ25390). The latest VIO releases contain a serious bug which may affect all VIOS/SEA client LPARs on IBM Power Servers.
Continue reading “New VIOS releases affect the Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) functionality”
In this post I will describe how to create a Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) from the new HMC Enhanced GUI interface where no single command in VIOS command line is required. Continue reading “How to create SEA without touching VIOS”
In the past, the only option to provide redundant Ethernet on dedicated network adapters for IBM i was a VIRTUALIP ‘interface’. Starting with IBM i 7.1 TR3, there is a new feature called Link aggregation. It is much better and much easier for implementation than VIPA.
Continue reading “Use link aggregation instead of VIPA on IBM i”
Last few months months I’m struggling with a speed of a virtual Ethernet adapters. Just buying and configuring 10Gbit adapters in the Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) will not boost your network speed to the network heaven. I give you few examples how the speed/bandwidth change for a VLAN, depending from the configuration.
Continue reading “10Gbit adapters and virtual ethernet speed”
Finally the announcement day arrived. POWER8 and SR-IOV have been introduced to the world, and I can share my experience from my last residency.
Single Root I/O Virtualization are not new adapters, but this is a new technology, standard, specification. In fact, it uses adapters which are on the market for some time already. Specification allows to get a slice of a physical adapter and assign it an LPAR. This feature requires a proper hardware, firmware, and all elements around it.
Continue reading “SR-IOV technology on POWER – my few words”
