[entity777]

Hello, I am trying to create a model for our SEA configuration. We have four physical ethernet ports and will use two VIO servers to service four VIO Clients. I have searched through quite a bit of documentation and can't find any scenario where two VIO servers are using four physical ethernet ports.

I would like to be able to ultimately have each VIO Client use its own physical network port, then use one other physical network port as its failover port. So VIO Client 1 would use eth port 1 as a primary connection, and eth port 2 as its backup, VIO Client 2 would use eth port 2 as its primary and eth port 3 as its backup and so on...

In order for this to work, it appears that I would need four SEA adapters, four control channels and one VLAN to serve all virtual adapters for all VIOs and VIO Clients. Each control channel would connect a different set of SEA adapters. Has anyone else tried this type of setup - or am I way out of line.

Forgive my ignorance as our organization is very new to IBM and virtualization. Thanks - Jeff

[ross.mather]

Seems like you are making things a lot more complex than they need to. Is there a reason why you want to have each LPAR use a specific physical port?

I'd just define the 4 ports in one big bundle and then let everything sort itself out.

If you really want to go down this route, which I wouldn't advise, then define each Physical Adapter to a VLAN and then etherchannel the various VLANS together in your chosen order at LPAR level.

[cdelgadop]

Hi

If you have four physical ethernet ports, one first approach (if configuring just one VIOS) could be to create an unique Etherchannel with all of them. You will then have a very good network bandwith and failover of any failing adapter. However this approach has a problem, what about if the network switch itself fails ???, Then an improvement could be creating an Etherchannel with 3 adapters and left one configured as NIB (Network Interface Backup) connected to another switch.

Since you're working with two VIOS you should assign two adapters to each VIOS and then create etherchannel devices on each VIOS. This way you get the benefit of bandwith and load balancing as well as failover. You can also use NIB on each VIOS in order to eliminate netwrok switch as point of failure.

Hope this helps

[entity777]

Thanks to both of you for your replies. I originally wanted to assign a network port to each client partition with another eth port as a backup thinking this would allow us the most bandwidth and there would be a backup/failover for each eth port.

What both of you have done in your replies was set us on the right path. I was thinking SEA failover may not be the best route and now you have confirmed it. I will plan for NIB with Etherchannel. Thanks again.