Ibm P5-590 And P5-595 Virtualization Technologies - IBM p5 590 System Handbook

single server while reducing the number of physical adapters and devices
required in the system configuration.
Figure 3-11 depicts the relationship between the physical adapters in the VIOS
and the virtual I/O adapters in the client partitions. The figure shows the full suite
of POWER5 virtualization technologies, with additional detail regarding the
Virtual I/O Server. In this drawing, the VIOS owns three physical I/O adapters;
three client partitions own corresponding virtual I/O adapters. The thick solid
lines running through the POWER Hypervisor represent the secure
communication channels between the virtual I/O device in the client partition and
the physical I/O device in the VIOS.
Partitions
Virtual
I/O
Adapter
Virtual Ethernet
Processor
Resources
CPU
CPU
CPU
CPU
Active
Pool
Figure 3-11 IBM p5-590 and p5-595 Virtualization Technologies
Virtual I/O Servers are the only partitions that can have virtual SCSI server
adapters assigned to them. Any partition can have virtual Ethernet adapters, and
a VIOS is not necessarily required in order to use virtual Ethernet. However, the
VIOS does provide a Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) service, which can bridge
the internal virtual network traffic though a physical Ethernet adapter and out
onto an external physical network. Virtual SCSI and virtual Ethernet are briefly
explained in 3.6, "Virtual SCSI" on page 81 and 3.3, "Virtual Ethernet" on
page 65. Shared Ethernet functionality is described in 3.4, "Shared Ethernet
Adapter" on page 73.
IBM Eserver p5 590 and 595 System Handbook
80
AIX 5L
Linux
Partitions
Virtual
I/O
Adapter
POWER Hypervisor
Memory
Resources
CPU CPU CPU MEM
MEM
CPU
CPU CPU
MEM
CPU
CUoD
MEM
CPU
Active
Pool
Platform Hardware
i5/OS
Partitions
Virtual
I/O
Adapter
I/O
Resources
MEM
MEM MEM
IOA IOA
MEM MEM
MEM
IOA IOA
MEM
IOA
CUoD
MEM
IOA
Active
Virtual I/O Server
(VIOS) Partition
Physical
Physical Physical
I/O
I/O I/O
Adapter
Adapter Adapter
Virtual Storage
Virtual
TTY
Service
IOA
Processor
IOA