Re: IBM Power partitioning

Chris,

VIOS is needed to communicate with many SANs such as V7000. So that's one thing it does for you. If your SAN isn't supported directly by i you need VIOS.

VIOS has the ability to split up an inbound Ethernet Trunk into individual internal VLANs.

VIOS has the ability to handle NPIV. That can mean for example that the same disk LUNs on a SAN are visible through two different VIO partitions. This means redundancy of VIO without having to purchase twice the disk and then Mirror it at IBM i.

With VIOS you can support Live Partition Mobility which allows a partition, while running, to me moved from one server to another on the fly. The Disk MUST be on a SAN and available to both servers.

With VIOS you can support Active Memory Sharing between partitions (including IBM i.)

There is likely stuff I've missed but these are the biggies as I see them.

Note that NONE of the above is supported on the POWER5 machines and some of it on POWER6, all of it on POWER7.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

On 5/31/2012 1:46 PM, Chris Bipes wrote:

I am just trying to get a better understanding of IBM Power system architecture. I currently have two power 5, 520's, one power 6 520, and a power 7 720.

I have been listening to the VIOS questions and trying to see if we are running VIOS. I do not think VIOS is necessary on hardware other than the blades. I could be wrong.

I have an HMC used to create i5/OS partitions on all the systems. Each system basically has all the hardware allocated to one iSeries partition. In my instance I am not using VIOS, right? Why would I want VIOS if I can allocate the hardware directly to the partition? Guess If I wanted to share the hardware among multiple iSeries partitions I would need VIOS. Is there any other reason to run VIOS? What advantages does it offer beside sharing of hardware?

--
Chris Bipes
Director of Information Services
CrossCheck, Inc.