Virtualization VIO basics

The Virtual I/O Server is part of the IBM System p Advanced Power Virtualization hardware feature. Virtual I/O Server allows sharing of physical resources between LPARs including virtual SCSI and virtual networking. This allows more efficient utilization of physical resources through sharing between LPARs and facilitates server consolidation.

The Virtual I/O Server is software that is located in a logical partition. This software facilitates the sharing of physical I/O resources between AIX® and Linux® client logical partitions within the server. The Virtual I/O Server provides virtual SCSI target and Shared Ethernet Adapter capability to client logical partitions within the system, allowing the client logical partitions to share SCSI devices and Ethernet adapters. The Virtual I/O Server software requires that the logical partition be dedicated solely for its use.
The Virtual I/O Server is available as part of the Advanced POWER™ Virtualization hardware feature.
Using the Virtual I/O Server facilitates the following functions:
-->Sharing of physical resources between logical partitions on the system
-->Creating logical partitions without requiring additional physical I/O resources
-->Creating more logical partitions than there are I/O slots or physical devices available with the ability for partitions to have dedicated I/O, virtual I/O, or both
-->Maximizing use of physical resources on the system
-->Helping to reduce the Storage Area Network (SAN) infrastructure
The Virtual I/O Server supports client logical partitions running the following operating systems:
-->AIX 5.3 or later
-->SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 for POWER (or later)
-->Red Hat® Enterprise Linux AS for POWER Version 3 (update 2 or later)
-->Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS for POWER Version 4 (or later)
For the most recent information about devices that are supported on the Virtual I/O Server, to download Virtual I/O Server fixes and updates, and to find additional information about the Virtual I/O Server, see the Virtual I/O Server Web site.
The Virtual I/O Server comprises the following primary components:
-->Virtual SCSI
-->Virtual Networking
-->Integrated Virtualization Manager
The following sections provide a brief overview of each of these components.


Virtual SCSI
Physical adapters with attached disks or optical devices on the Virtual I/O Server logical partition can be shared by one or more client logical partitions. The Virtual I/O Server offers a local storage subsystem that provides standard SCSI-compliant logical unit numbers (LUNs). The Virtual I/O Server can export a pool of heterogeneous physical storage as an homogeneous pool of block storage in the form of SCSI disks.
Unlike typical storage subsystems that are physically located in the SAN, the SCSI devices exported by the Virtual I/O Server are limited to the domain within the server. Although the SCSI LUNs are SCSI compliant, they might not meet the needs of all applications, particularly those that exist in a distributed environment.
The following SCSI peripheral-device types are supported:
-->Disks backed by a logical volume
-->Disks backed by a physical volume
-->Optical devices (DVD-RAM and DVD-ROM)


Virtual networking
Shared Ethernet Adapter allows logical partitions on the virtual local area network (VLAN) to share access to a physical Ethernet adapter and to communicate with systems and partitions outside the server. This function enables logical partitions on the internal VLAN to share the VLAN with stand-alone servers.


Integrated Virtualization Manager
The Integrated Virtualization Manager provides a browser-based interface and a command-line interface that you can use to manage IBM® System p5™ and IBM eServer™ pSeries® servers that use the IBM Virtual I/O Server. On the managed system, you can create logical partitions, manage the virtual storage and virtual Ethernet, and view service information related to the server. The Integrated Virtualization Manager is packaged with the Virtual I/O Server, but it is activated and usable only on certain platforms and where no Hardware Management Console (HMC) is present.

Introduction to VIO

Prior to the introduction of POWER5 systems, it was only possible to create as many separate logical partitions (LPARs) on an IBM system as there were physical processors. Given that the largest IBM eServer pSeries POWER4 server, the p690, had 32 processors, 32 partitions were the most anyone could create. A customer could order a system with enough physical disks and network adapter cards to so that each LPAR would have enough disks to contain operating systems and enough network cards to allow users to communicate with each partition.
The Advanced POWER Virtualization™ feature of POWER5 platforms1 makes it possible to allocate fractions of a physical CPU to a POWER5 LPAR. Using virtual CPU's and virtual I/O a user can create many more LPARs on a p5 system than there are CPU's or I/O slots. The Advanced POWER Virtualization feature accounts for this by allowing users to create shared network adapters and virtual SCSI disks. Customers can use these virtual resources to provide disk space and network adapters for each LPAR they create on their POWER5 system
(see Figure ).

There are three components of the Advanced POWER Virtualization feature: Micro-Partitioning™, shared Ethernet adapters, and virtual SCSI. In addition, AIX 5L Version
5.3 allows users to define virtual Ethernet adapters permitting inter-LPAR communication. This paper provides an overview of how each of these components works and then shows the details of how to set up a simple three-partition system where one partition is a Virtual I/O Server and the other two partitions use virtual Ethernet and virtual SCSI to differing degrees. What follows is a practical guide to help a new POWER5 customer set up simple systems where high availability is not a concern, but becoming familiar with this new technology in a development environment is the primary goal.

Micro-Partitioning
An element of the IBM POWER Virtualization feature called Micro-Partitioning can divide a single processor into many different processors. In POWER4 systems, each physical processor is dedicated to an LPAR. This concept of dedicated processors is still present in POWER5 systems, but so is the concept of shared processors. A POWER5 system administrator can use the Hardware Management Console (HMC) to place processors in
a shared processor pool. Using the HMC, the administrator can assign fractions of a CPU to individual partitions. If one LPAR is defined to use processors in the shared processor pool, when those CPUs are idle, the POWER Hypervisor™ makes them available to other partitions. This ensures that these processing resources are not wasted. Also, the ability to assign fractions of a CPU to a partition means it is possible to partition POWER5 servers into many different partitions. Allocation of physical processor and memory resources on POWER5 systems is managed by a system firmware component called the POWER Hypervisor.

Virtual Networking
Virtual networking on POWER5 hardware consists of two main capabilities. One capability is provided by a software IEEE 802.1q (VLAN) switch that is implemented in the Hypervisor on POWER5 hardware. Users can use the HMC to add Virtual Ethernet adapters to their partition definitions. Once these are added and the partitions booted, the new adapters can be configured just like real physical adapters, and the partitions can communicate with each other without having to connect cables between the LPARs. Users can separate traffic from different VLANs by assigning different VLAN IDs to each virtual Ethernet adapter. Each AIX 5.3 partition can support up to 256 Virtual Ethernet adapters

In addition, a part of the Advanced POWER virtualization virtual networking feature allows users to share physical adapters between logical partitions. These shared adapters, called Shared Ethernet Adapters (SEAs), are managed by a Virtual I/O Server partition which maps physical adapters under its control to virtual adapters. It is possible to map many physical Ethernet adapters to a single virtual Ethernet adapter thereby eliminating a single physical adapter as a point of failure in the architecture.
There are a few things users of virtual networking need to consider before implementing it. First, virtual networking ultimately uses more CPU cycles on the POWER5 machine than when physical adapters are assigned to a partition. Users should consider assigning a physical adapter directly to a partition when heavy network traffic is predicted over a certain adapter. Secondly, users may want to take advantage of larger MTU sizes that virtual Ethernet allows if they know that their applications will benefit from the reduced fragmentation and better performance that larger MTU sizes offer. The MTU size limit for SEA is smaller than Virtual Ethernet adapters, so users will have to carefully choose an MTU size so that packets are sent to external networks with minimum fragmentation.

Virtual SCSI
The Advanced POWER Virtualization feature called virtual SCSI allows access to physical disk devices which are assigned to the Virtual I/O Server (VIOS). The system administrator uses VIOS logical volume manager commands to assign disks to volume groups. The administrator creates logical volumes in the Virtual I/O Server volume groups. Either these logical volumes or the physical disks themselves may ultimately appear as physical disks (hdisks) to the Virtual I/O Server’s client partitions once they are associated with virtual SCSI host adapters. While the Virtual I/O Server software is
packaged as an additional software bundle that a user purchases separately from the AIX 53 distribution, the virtual I/O client software is a part of the AIX 5.3 base installation media so an administrator does not need to install any additional filesets on a Virtual SCSI client partition. Srikrishnan provides more details on how the Virtual SCSI feature works