This is the best explanation I can give you. Consider a situation where you have a VLAN (100 for this example) then this VLAN will exist as physical and virtual (in the Hypervisor). Your example above would result in ent0 and ent2 would be connected to the physical VLAN and by virtue of the etherchannel construction ent6 is also connected.

The command:

Code:

mkvdev -sea ent6 -vadapter ent4 -default ent4 -defaultid 100 -attr ha_mode=auto ctl_chan=ent5

the -defaultid 100 flag sets the VLAN id to 100 for this virtual adapter.

would result in the ent7 adapter being created. This is the virtual adapter which would carry the virtual VLAN address for LPAR communication through the VIO servers. Both VIO servers would have the same characteristics set so there would be identical Ethernet adpaters on both VIOS but the trunk priority would be set to alternate values (1, 2 etc).

When creating the Ethernet adapter on the client LPAR one selects the VLAN 100 on the drop down menu on the HMC on both VIO servers. As the adapters on the VIO server have been configured to talk on VLAN 100 nothing else needs to be done except allocating an IP address when the LPAR is powered on. No IP address needs to be added to the VIO virtual ethernet adapter.

All traffic to the outside world from the client LPAR would be as follows:

Client LPAR Ethernet adpater ent0 > along the Hypervisor VLAN 100 > into the VIO server SEA ent7 > Upto the virtual adapter ent4 > through the etherchannel adapter ent6 > finally out of ent0 and ent2 to the real network infrastructure.

This unfortunately is the hardest part of VIO construction to get your head around!