New VIOS releases affect the Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) functionality

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”

10Gbit adapters and virtual ethernet speed

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”

SR-IOV technology on POWER – my few words

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”