Hi,

I am little confused about the virtual Ethernet configuration on VIO and Client Partitions. There is alot of info on the internet but it gets more confusing....

If I have LHEA, it is very simple. Just assign LHEA (logical host ethernet adapter) to client partition -> run smitty tcpip and do the configuration.

However, if I don't have LHEAs then I have to use SEA (shared ethernet adapter)

My VIO Server has ethernet adapter.

I would like to share this ethernet port on VIO Server for all my client partition traffic going outside ?

How would i create the shared ethernet ?

1) Do I have to create virtual ethernet card both in VIO & Client Partition

2) Map the physical port on VIO with the virtual port ?

3) then smitty tcpip on client partition ?

– Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) – A physical adapter or EtherChannel in
a VIO Server can be shared by client partitions. Clients use virtual
Ethernet adapters

Virtual Ethernet – a LPAR-to-LPAR Virtual LAN within a POWER5 Server
– Does not require the APV feature code

I believe there are 3 ways to create Virtual Ethernet on Client Partition

1. LHEA -- the simplest method. Just assign the LHEA from HMC to the client partition, run cfgmgr and you will see en0

2. Create Virtual Adapter in HMC on the client partition
1. In the navigation pane, open Systems Management > Servers, and click the system on which the logical partition is located.
2. In the work pane, select the logical partition on which you want to configure the virtual Ethernet adapter, click the Tasks button, and click Dynamic Logical Partitioning > Virtual Adapters.
3. Click Actions and choose Create > Ethernet Adapter.
4. Enter the slot number for the virtual Ethernet adapter into Adapter ID. {filosophizer: Which slot number is this?}
5. Enter the Port Virtual LAN ID (PVID) for the virtual Ethernet adapter into VLAN ID. The PVID allows the virtual Ethernet adapter to communicate with other virtual Ethernet adapters that have the same PVID.
6. Select IEEE 802.1 compatible adapter if you want to configure the virtual Ethernet adapter to communicate over multiple virtual LANs. If you leave this option unchecked and you want this logical partition to connect to multiple virtual networks, you must create multiple virtual adapters by creating additional virtual LAN IDs.


3. SEA (shared Ethernet Adapter)
1. Create Virtual Adapter for VIO Server
2. Run Cfgmgr
3. mkvdev -sea target_device -vadapter virtual_ethernet_adapters \
-default DefaultVirtualEthernetAdapter -defaultid SEADefaultPVID
{filosophizer: what steps do I have to take for SEA on the client side ?}

thanks

P.S: The attachment has many methods to create virtual ethernet , but it is really confusing..

VIO WIKI: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wi...ualization/VIO