Re: Ethernet Bridging Between IBM i Host and IBM i Guest - query

That is the perfect solution, host the Ethernet for the development on production with the Ethernet bridge. Yes the bridge is a layer 2 device, but only the host sees it. The network just sees another NIC.

Set up time for someone who’s done it, 10 min. First time, 30 min. Just follow the instructions IBM provides.

Several of us on this list have done that very set up many, many times. I did it last in mid December.

One last thought, in the instructions it will tell you NOT to put an address on the bridge device, heed that advice. Not following that advice will cause the system to start chasing it’s Ethernet tail, and become unusable really, really fast. Hard power off from the HMC is the only way I’ve seen it stop.

Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects

On Feb 7, 2022, at 7:57 PM, Laurence Chiu <lchiu7@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi

We have a production LPAR with two NICs on a P8. Our Development LPAR runs
on another P9 server. Both run off SANs which are in a Metro Mirror
relationship.

We want to implement a sort of reverse DR capability so that if we lose our
P9 and there is an urgent need to perform some development, we can spin up
the Dev LPAR On the P8

From a data point of view that is not an issue since the LUN the
development LPAR runs on is replicated in real-time to the P8. The issue is
network access.

The production server has two NICs in it and they are both dedicated to
production. We have no more spare slots to install another NIC. So it was
suggested we could use ethernet bridging as per this link

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ethernet-bridging-between-ibm-i-host-and-ibm-i-guest

That looks like a really good idea on the surface since we have two ports
on each NIC patched into the primary and secondary ports on the switches
and use ViP for resilience. So we could use a third port on one of the NICs
and use its line definition to create a virtual NIC on the development
LPAR. Given that the likelihood of our needing this LPAR is pretty low, it
seemed like a good solution.

Our network guy initially poured cold water on this idea since he said we
don't support layer 2 bridging. But that is on the external network side,
This seems to be an entirely IBMi internal solution that the external need
not know anything about except the port on the NIC we want to use is
patched into the switch and enabled.

Does this seem correct or have I missed some subtlety here?

Thanks
--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list
To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: https://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at https://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.

Please contact support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx for any subscription related questions.

Help support midrange.com by shopping at amazon.com with our affiliate link: https://amazon.midrange.com