IBM BladeCenter PS703 Technical Overview And Introduction page 123

layer 2, the original MAC address and VLAN tags of the packet are visible to other systems
on the physical network. IEEE 802.1 VLAN tagging is supported.
The SEA also provides the ability for several client partitions to share a physical adapter.
Using an SEA, you can connect internal and external VLANs using a physical adapter. The
SEA service can only be hosted in the VIOS, not in a general purpose AIX or Linux partition,
and acts as a layer-2 network bridge to securely transport network traffic between virtual
Ethernet networks (internal) and one or more (EtherChannel) physical network adapters
(external). These virtual Ethernet network adapters are defined by the POWER Hypervisor on
the VIOS.
Tip: A Linux partition can provide bridging function as well, by using the brctl command.
Figure 3-11 shows a configuration example of an SEA with one physical and two virtual
Ethernet adapters. An SEA can include up to 16 virtual Ethernet adapters on the VIOS that
share the same physical access.
VIOS
en3
(if.)
ent3
(sea)
ent0 ent1
(virt.)
(phy.)
VLAN=2 PVID=1
Ethernet
switch
Figure 3-11 Architectural view of a SEA
A single SEA setup can have up to 16 Virtual Ethernet trunk adapters and each virtual
Ethernet trunk adapter can support up to 21 VLANs (20 VIDs and 1 PVID). The number of
SEAs that can be set up in a VIOS partition is limited only by the resource availability because
there are no configuration limits.
Unicast, broadcast, and multicast are supported, so protocols that rely on broadcast or
multicast, such as Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
(DHCP), Boot Protocol (BOOTP), and Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) can work across
an SEA.
Client 1
en0
(if.)
ent2 ent0
(virt.) (virt.)
VLAN=1
External
Network
Client 2 Client 3
en0 en0
(if.) (if.)
ent0 ent0
(virt.) (virt.)
VLAN=2
Chapter 3. Virtualization
109