Logical View Of An Inter-Partition Vlan - IBM p5 590 System Handbook

The POWER Hypervisor provides a virtual Ethernet switch function based on the
IEEE 802.1Q VLAN standard that allows partition communication within the
same server. The connections are based on an implementation internal to the
Hypervisor that moves data between partitions. This section will describe the
various elements of a virtual Ethernet and implications relevant to different types
of workloads. Figure 3-6 is an example of an inter-partition VLAN.
Figure 3-6 Logical view of an inter-partition VLAN
Virtual Ethernet adapter concepts
Partitions that communicate through a virtual Ethernet channel will need to have
an additional in-memory channel. This requires the creation of an in-memory
channel between partitions on the HMC. The kernel creates a virtual device for
each memory channel indicated by the firmware. The AIX 5l configuration
manager creates the device special files. A unique Media Access Control (MAC)
prefix
address is also generated when the virtual Ethernet device is created. A
value can be assigned for the system so that the generated MAC addresses in a
system consists of a common system prefix, plus an algorithmically-generated
unique part per adapter.
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Chapter 3. POWER5 virtualization capabilities